Ricesome and the Amul Factories

As you might know, I was in Gujarat recently (if you have read my previous article) and what is Gujarat famous for apart from calorie-burning dances, being the opposite of Punjab and shrewd businessmen that can convince you to buy the Taj Mahal and charge extra for the four pillars? It is the Anand Milk Union Limited or Amul for our convenience.

Amul Chocolate Factory

The history of how Amul came to be is very inspiring and eye-catching. It is one of those stories that you would expect people to make films about and...............they did! There is a film called Manthan (crowdfunded by farmers) which you can watch online on Amul's YouTube channel for free. Now I could just go on and on about how this is one of the coolest stories of unity and freedom in India, but that's not what I promised you today.

I am here to talk about my recent visit to the Amul Chocolate and Dairy factories in Anand. In case you are ignorant or "busy with your own life", you might not have known that Amul offers free visits to people to their factories in Anand. All you have to do is go to this link here and book your free visit on a specific date. But do that later, right now *whistle*, I need your attention towards exhibit Ricesome.

(P.S. I am not sponsored by Amul, although I am open to that concept)

Firstly, what I have noticed is that Amul is everywhere in Ahmedabad. I was very surprised to see stand-alone Amul shops around the city. This might not be surprising to some of you from other states like Maharashtra, but I found it a bit exciting because I always look for Amul dairy and other products where I come from and there is only one shop that sells them.

Anyways, I first visited the Amul Chocolate Factory and it was inaugurated in 2018. My entire view into the world of chocolate manufacturing was from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Although it wasn't necessarily that, it was a first-time experience with something like this. Fortunately, our entire group made it safely without finding ourselves blown up into blueberry balloons or drowning in a chocolate river.

The factory is very aesthetically appealing and it doesn't look like a "factory" on the outside, but more like a museum. We enter the reception and there is an entire wall dedicated to all the Amul products that are manufactured there in Gujarat. Then I hear, "Shall we move on to the tour? Oh and by the way, no photography please...". We move on into the factory with phones in our pockets like savages.

Unfortunately, most of the process was slow or shut down due to a stock audit for the next day. We could not witness the full potential but the guide gave us some good information, like how Amul produces over 100 varieties of chocolate, how there is no human touch in the entire process of manufacturing, and how the Chocolate Almonds they manufacture are ALSO good for eating. (Those were his exact words)

Assorted Amul Products

The raw material which they use for processing comes from a company in Karnataka called Campco and the total capacity of the plant is 1000 tonnes per month. To be honest, I wasn't quite paying attention to most of the guide's explanation of the process. I was more fascinated by the sheer number of products that Amul manufactures from chocolates to cookies to chocolate almonds that can be used for other purposes, to whole wheat flour.

Amul Dairy Plant

Let's move on to the Amul Dairy plant which is much bigger in comparison to the chocolate plant. They manufacture and process milk, milk powder, and butter. If you are planning a visit to the factory, let me tell you it is better to do that in the first week of a month, unless you just want to stare at equipment like it's a museum. The capacity at which the factory stores and manufactures milk is truly marvellous. Did you know that Amul clarifies 1,20,000 litres of milk per hour? Did you also know they manufacture whole milk powder specially for the Indian army? Also, did you know the difference between "Amul Gold" and "Amul A2 Buffalo Milk"? Oh yeah-

This is interesting.

Amul Gold and Amul A2 Buffalo Milk are both milk packets manufactured by Amul but only one of them guarantees that the milk in the packet is from a Buffalo. Amul Gold can have milk from different animals in it. They say that unless a packet's label says that it is from a specific animal, it is not necessarily from that. Also, the milk which is labelled as homogenized cannot be used for curdling because the fat is evenly distributed. So, if you buy homogenized milk from the market and try to use it to make sweets or extract Malai, it won't happen. This knowledge, I felt, is important otherwise people like me spend hours trying to curdle homogenized milk only to remind ourselves that we are "label ignorant".

Overall, both of these factory visits were good and first-time experiences and showed us the scale at which Amul operates in Gujarat especially. I grew up watching Amul ads and looking at all these wide variety of products presented to us was like leaving kids in an amusement park. Amul is a household name and it represents one of the greatest success stories ever told in this country. A story which we'll talk about another day...... hopefully.

That's it for this time. See you next week!