Amul (Anand Milk Union Limited / GCMMF)

Two village dairy societies once pooled together 247 litres of milk a day. That small union is now building the world’s largest curd plant, 1,700 kilometres from where it began.

What Amul Is

Amul is the trade name of the cooperative movement founded in Anand, Gujarat. It was registered on 14 December 1946.

• Kaira farmers first registered it as the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Union.
• The brand name “AMUL”, short for Anand Milk Union Limited, was adopted in 1955.

Its Founders and Three Tiers

Tribhuvandas Patel founded the cooperative. Verghese Kurien joined in 1949. He later scaled it into the “Anand Pattern” model.

• Amul’s structure has three tiers. These are village dairy societies, district milk unions, and a state-level federation.
• GCMMF was formed in 1973. It markets Amul products nationally, and handles operations for 18 district unions.
• GCMMF is owned by roughly 3.6 million milk-producer members, across about 18,000 villages.

Daily Scale

GCMMF procures over 25 million litres of milk daily nationwide.

• Amul’s “Anand Pattern” became the direct model for the White Revolution. It also shaped Operation Flood.
• It scaled one Gujarat cooperative into a national dairy movement.

The Bengal Dairy Project

On 19 July 2026, Union Minister Amit Shah performed Bhoomi Pujan for the Amul Bengal Dairy Project. This ceremony, held in Kolkata, marked the start of the project. The plant will house the world’s largest curd factory.

• The project, at Howrah Food Park, is estimated to cost around ₹700 crore.
• Once complete, the plant will process about 30 lakh litres of milk daily. It will produce roughly 1,000 metric tonnes of curd and cultured dairy products a day.
• Its planned output also includes packaged milk, UHT milk, ice cream, paneer, ghee, and sweets.
• More than 1.25 lakh milk-producing farmers in West Bengal, including over 30,000 women producers, are already linked to Amul’s cooperative network there.
• West Bengal’s state government provided 30 acres of land free of cost for the project.

Why Curd, and an Eastward Bet

The Bengal project’s location is a deliberate choice. It moves Amul’s manufacturing footprint east, well beyond its traditional Gujarat base.

• Building the world’s largest curd plant, rather than a general-purpose dairy, reflects a specific bet.
• Curd (dahi) is a category with strong regional demand and daily repeat purchases.
• A cooperative outliving its founders by decades, and still growing into new states, is itself notable. It shows the model can outlast any one leader.

Cooperative, Not a Government Body

A few details here trip up exam-takers. Watch for these three traps.

• Ownership Trap: Amul and GCMMF are cooperatives. Millions of farmer-members own them. They are not government departments or public-sector firms. Exam options sometimes misclassify Amul as a PSU or a NABARD scheme; it is neither.
• NDDB-Confusion Trap: A second trap mixes up Amul, the brand and GCMMF, with the National Dairy Development Board, or NDDB. NDDB is a separate, statutory government body. It guided Operation Flood using the Anand Pattern. Amul and GCMMF are a cooperative federation. NDDB helped copy that model elsewhere, but they are not the same body.
• Whose Article: Questions on founder Tribhuvandas Patel’s own life belong to a separate article. Questions on Amul and GCMMF, as institutions, belong here.