In a path-breaking move to ensure uninterrupted supply of fresh milk to the Indian Army jawans posted in the Siachen Base Camp, Nubra Valley, Leh, and other frontline areas, the Anand-headquartered National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) is setting up a fully solar-powered milk processing plant in Kargil. The new unit will process 10,000 liters of milk a day and become one of the highest-altitude renewable energy dairy plants in India.
“We have now decided to have a new milk processing plant in Kargil with capacity to handle 10,000 litres per day. We are planning to make this plant fully solar powered as the region has very good sunshine round the year. We plan to rope in 1,500 farmers in Kargil for the new plant that will help meet part of the 20,000 litres of fresh milk requirement of the Indian Army,” Meenesh Shah, Chairman of NDDB, told businessline in an exclusive interaction at his office in Anand, Gujarat.
Though Kargil is characterised by high and rugged mountain terrain with elevations ranging from 8,000-23,000 feet, the region has also two river valleys — Suru and Zanskar — that supports the growth of vegetation needed for the cattle to survive round the year.
Solar-powered unit
“The idea was to provide fresh milk to the Indian Army which normally gets milk packed in tetra packs. The demand from Army jawans is always for fresh milk which was not available in the far-flung border areas,” Shah said adding that the new plant will be built in association with the Ladakh UT Dairy Cooperative Federation located at Leh and will work on solar power. This would be the second solar-powered milk processing facility being set up by NDDB in the country. This will be partly provided by the Central government.
“Our proposal for setting up this plant has been approved by the Centre. After this approval, the NDDB will be getting a ₹12.6 crore grant for the setting up of the ₹25 crore unit,” said the NDDB chief. This would be the second solar-powered milk processing plant set up by NDDB after it had partnered with Ernakulam Milk Union for a bigger milk processing plant powered by a 2 MW solar plant in Kochi, Kerala.
Supplying it at an altitude ranging between 10,000-20,000 feet, the forward operating bases of the Indian Army in Siachen, Nubra, Leh, Nimmoo and Karu spread in Ladakh require 20,000 litres of fresh milk each day. The new plant at Kargil will augment an existing facility at Leh which is capable of processing up to 5,000 litres of milk each day. It was taken over by NDDB and has delivered milk to the Army since February 2024.
The milk processing plant
“In Ladakh, we first took charge of an existing small milk processing plant that had a capacity to handle 5,000 litres per day. This was not in a good condition. So, after signing the MoU in August 2022, we refurbished the plant and made it operational in 2023. We started collecting milk from one village involving 5-10 farmers. These farmers had surplus milk but had no buyers. So, we thought it was an intervention which could support both the Army and the farmers,” Shah said, adding that NDDB had in August 2022 signed an agreement in this regard with the Ladakh UT Dairy Cooperative Federation and Ladakh Development Council for taking over the existing plant.
The fresh milk supply in military bases in this region was also inadequate, so NDDB decided to set up a new plant of higher capacity. According to the NDDB chief, there were just a few suppliers of milk in Ladakh, selling it at ₹ 60 per liter in the market in 2022. “With support from a subsidiary of Japanese automobile firm Suzuki Motors, we designed a van to collect milk from villages in the Ladakh region which were scattered and located far from each other. This specially designed van for milk collection had a testing mechanism and milk chilling facility within itself. So, instead of farmers coming to the dairy for supplying milk, this van could visit them and collect milk in these border areas. Now in Leh, we are working with 1,200 farmers in 27 adjoining villages and supplying 9,000 litres of milk to the Indian Army,” Shah recounted. In October 2025, NDDB-managed Manipur Milk Producers’ Cooperative Union Ltd had started supplying fresh milk to Assam Rifles, and the dairy cooperatives of Assam managed by NDDB have also been supplying to the Indian Army.
