The ceremonial signing of the Deed of Donation was held on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022 with DTI Cebu Director Rose Mae Quiñanola, Small and Medium Enterprise Development chief Marivic Aguilar and the representatives from the cooperative.
Quiñanola said the SSF provided the cooperative a leap forward to becoming a lead dairy processing business of pasteurized milk daily.
Cefedco became a beneficiary of the SSF Milk Processing Project worth P3,370,000 in 2016. The cooperative was granted machineries such as homogenizer, play heat exchanger, cream separator, fabricated condensing unit for ice bank and secondary storage.
Three years later, in 2019, the cooperative was subjected to an upgrade and was granted a project worth P2,995,000. New interventions added include an ice bank with ice making machine, milk receiver tank, and milk analyzer which aims to improve the quality and higher productivity.
Assistance
Cefedco plant manager Bienvenido Rodriguez expressed his gratitude to the government partnership.
He said the cooperative has assisted 24 micro, small and medium enterprises, 700 dairy farmers, 414 beneficiaries and generated a total sales of P26 million from 2016 to 2019.
Cefedco has been operational since 1991 and was registered with the Cooperative Development Authority on March 22, 2010.
The group is composed of primary dairy cooperatives that deliver raw cow’s milk to the Cebu Milk Processing Plant. It has been producing fresh milk, choco milk and non-fat milk for almost three decades already.
These products are sold to its regular customers such as malls and convenient stores, coffee shops, hotels and restaurants, food chains, subdivisions and villages. The group also supplies sterilized milk to government agencies and local government units for feeding programs.
With the increasing adaptability of Filipinos and increasing demand of the market, people are now looking for locally produced fresh milk. This opened an opportunity for the industry to grow and heightened the awareness of the nutritive value of milk and consumer preferences.
Compared to other fresh milk brands present in the market, Cefedco’s Cebu Dairy Fresh has a great advantage because of its guaranteed freshness as it undergoes pasteurization and homogenization, extending its shelf life to one week.
Fresh milk is a rich source of several nutrients including protein, calcium, phosphorus, Vitamins A and D.
Cefedco chairman Joseph Durad said the cooperative aims to enhance the packaging and conduct good manufacturing practices training to farmers by the end of this year.
The cooperative also aims to secure additional equipment for production and linkage with the Department of Science and Technology. (KOC WITH PR)