``Considering only nine billion litres of the 570 billion litres of milk produced in the country is packaged and nearly 30 per cent of the total production is consumed in the metros, milk has become a thrust area for Tetra Pak,'' says the company vice-president, marketing, Surendran Menon.

And this the company hopes to do with the processing and packaging break- through, Tetra Fino, the new aseptic packaging product from Tetra Pak for milk which has been developed keeping the cost-conscious Indian consumer in mind.

Though still not as cheap as the conventional polyethene sachet, but cheaper than the Tetra Brik, Tetra Fino has proved to be a hit with several corporations which are seeking new markets for value added milk in the metros. The Hyderabad basedVijaya Dairy, Keventers of Calcutta, the Karnataka Milk Federation and Shiv Amrut Dairy of Mumbai are just a few corporations which have adopted the packaging product.

While milk has been sold as a commodity all these years, it is being increasingly branded with image conscious dairy corporations and even cooperatives beginning to adopt aseptic packaging. ``Though it will take some time to educate the consumers on the benefits of the product, our experience with it has been encouraging considering it is at least 25 per cent cheaper than the brik with a storage life of upto 45 days,'' says B P Acharya, managing director, AP Dairy Development Corporation (APDDC). While the corporation sells close to two lakh litres of packaged milk every day, according to Acharya about 20,000 litres of this would be in Tetra Fino soon.

Talking of the aseptic packaging potential itself, Menon is of the view that the total market, that is all players put together should cross the one billion packages mark by the year 2002 inIndia. While it has been resorting to relationship marketing mostly till now, according to Menon the company is working on a new campaign to popularise aseptic packaging -- particularly Tetra Fino -- for milk for which schools will be themain focus.y