Friesland Campina WAMCO Nigeria Plc has launched a Dairy Development Programme (DDP) in Shonga Dairies in Kwara State to harness local sourcing of milk in Nigeria.

This was revealed by the company during the Daily Trust 1st Agric Conference, which ended recently in Abuja.

WAMCO, makers of Peak milk, three crowns and Friso range of products said the programmes will benefit dairy farmers in Nigeria.

Temitope Adeola, the company Public Affairs Manager said the aim of the programme is to support the Federal Government's initiative to develop dairy farming in Nigeria by providing the required technical know-how on milk production to Nigerian farmers and also provide the necessary market for the farmers.

"To achieve this, our team of experts visited a number of locally established dairy farms to determine the availability of fresh milk in Nigeria. Series of examination were also carried out by our Quality Control Unit to check the quality impact of using fresh milk in our product recipe," she stated.

The image maker said WAMCO went into discussions with viable farmers from this area who can possibly meet the production demand of the company in the future if given the right trainings and market.

According to her, the company signed a MoU with the former governor of Kwara, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki to launch the dairy farming programmes in Shonga Farms.

On August 1st WAMCO collected its first 1,000 litres of fresh milk from Shonga Dairies in Kwara Sate. Since then, the company has been collecting 11,000 litres of fresh milk per day from Shonga Dairies.

With this, WAMCO stressed that the organisation is the first dairy company in Nigeria to use raw milk material from the country to manufacture evaporated milk.

"We are indeed proud of this and hope to take it to greater heights.

"However, the DDP is an intensive project that requires both professional attention and infrastructure to succeed. In view of this the company signed MoU with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture because milk production in Nigeria is currently low and the development process will take some time. The DDP therefore needs the support of the government and substantial investments in livestock and equipment. Again, as the dairy expert, we are committed to providing the required technical know-how on milk production to Nigerian farmers but we can only succeed on this project with the support of the government," she said.