Officials inspect multimillion-shilling milk chilling plants

The construction of milk chilling plants in Oyugis, Kipkelion and Muhoroni is almost complete.

United States Development Agency (USAid) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) officials at the weekend toured the plants that will cost Sh90 million.

The officials said the plants were 60 to 70 per cent complete and expressed hope that they could be launched before the end of the year.

The construction of the plants started in November last year.

According to the project’s coordinator, James Rao from ILRI, the Kisumu County milk plant alone has capacity for 60,000 litres.

This could be increased if the targeted 1,000 farmers engage in intensive dairy farming.

Mr Rao noted the dairy industry had grown tremendously since its liberalisation in 1992.

The country's dairy sub-sector contributes six to eight per cent of gross domestic product, with an annual milk production of 3.43 billion litres.

On Sunday, Rao and USaid officials toured the three sub counties to assess the progress of the work.

''We are happy with what we have seen and we see the milk plants being commissioned to start operating before the end of the year," Rao told The Standard.