Aavin gears to sell drinking water; floats tender for pet bottles

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Producers' Federation Ltd (Aavin) is on a new venture and for the first time, the Aavin is preparing to sell drinking water through pet bottles.

Aavin has floated a tender and invited companies to quote tender through online. After many decades of selling dairy products such as milk, curd, ghee, ice cream and butter as a successful business, now Aavin is venturing into the drinking water business.

The E tender invitation for the drinking water bottle says it would need one lakh packaged drinking water in pet bottles a day. It is planning to sell the drinking water in 500ml and one liter range.

"The tender was floated on May 8, we are getting good response from the bidders, the tender will be open on June 8 after only we come to know about bidders' quote", said a senior official of Aavin.

We are planning to sell the water bottles through already existing Aavin shops and outlets. Tthe shops will be increased exclusively to sell drinking water as per the demand, he added.

Aavin's effort to get into drinking water business can be seen as a step to encash the vaccum left by Amma water, which was a cheap and popular option for consumers during pre-Covid period.

But the dairy producers and dealers say differently. "This is a very wrong move, it would set Aavin in a wrong track from what it was aimed to create", said S.A Ponnusamy, founding president, Tamil Nadu milk dealers employee welfare association.