Cheese, a staple ingredient in Bhutanese cuisine, is proving to be a lucrative business. This is particularly evident from the challenges faced by the country’s only processed cheese manufacturing company, Koufuku International Limited. Despite its efforts, the company which is registered under Druk Holding and Investments is struggling to keep up with the growing local demand.
Koufuku started manufacturing in 2015, with the production of Gouda cheese, yogurts and butter. In 2019, the company also started producing processed cheese. It produced around 30 metric tonnes of cheese in a year then. Today, the yearly production has reached more than 200 metric tonnes.
The dairy plant collects milk from 16 dairy farms in four districts. While it has a capacity of 4,000 litres of milk a day, it can get only around 3,000 litres.
“We get around 3,000 litres of milk a day but this doesn’t remain the same, it changes. In winter, milk production goes down and when we don’t get the required milk supply, our cheese production doesn’t meet its target, and we can’t meet the demand.,” said Younten Tshering, marketing officer at Koufuku International Limited.
He said that some of the farmers are not willing to supply milk to the company as they can get more profits by selling their milk to local buyers.
He added that the shortage of milk supply, along with frequent machine problems, are the main reasons the company cannot meet market demand.
“We did not face much problem this year, but we had some difficulty last year due to frequent machine breakdowns. This year we planned and carried out maintenance works and have been monitoring the machines daily. However, our machines are quite old now.”
While the company has yet to find a solution to the milk supply issue, it says the machinery will be replaced in a phase-wise manner as the costs are expected to be quite high.
Currently, its processed cheese has reached almost all the districts except for Gasa and Zhemgang.
Sonam Darjay, Trashigang
Edited by Yeshi Gyaltshen
