Mother Dairy on Monday supplied around 250 tonnes of fruits and vegetables to its retail stores ‘Safal’ across Delhi-NCR to meet local demand amid the nationwide lockdown, a senior company official said.

Last week, the company had double its supply of fruits and vegetables in the Delhi-NCR at over 300 tonnes per day, as customers began panic-buying of household essentials after announcement of the 21-day nationwide lockdown.

“We have supplied around 250 tonnes of fruits and vegetables today (Monday). The supply has come down from over 300 tonnes last week as panic-buying has stopped but still it is more than normal,” PTI quoted Sood as saying.

Now that local vendors have the permission to sell fruits and vegetables in colonies, the demand at Safal stores have normalised, Sahoo noted.

Due to the sufficient amount of supply of all vegetables in the local markets the rates of veggies like potatoes, tomatoes and cauliflowers, too have come down, he said,

Prior to the lockdown, Mother Dairy used to supply 160-180 tonnes of fruits and vegetables per day in Delhi-NCR.

As per reports, MotherDairy on Friday supplied around 320 tonnes of items. Sahoo said the Mother Dairy could increase the capacity up to 400 tonnes per day.

“We are procuring 90 per cent of our supply from farmers. The remaining 10 per cent comes from local wholesale markets such as Azadpur,” he said.

“We are sourcing fruits and vegetables from Delhi and neighbouring states like Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand,” Sahoo added.

It is procuring onion from Maharashtra and potatoes from Agra in Uttar Pradesh.

As of now, Mother Dairy has enough stock of apples which it has stored in cold chain facility, he noted.

The company has more than 300 Safal stores across the Delhi-NCR region.

Sahoo said the company is enforcing safe distancing at its stores to check spread of coronavirus. It is also taking other precautionary measures in the entire supply chain.

Mother Dairy is a leading milk supplier in the national capital region with sales of over 30 lakh litres per day.

Keeping the lockdown in view, it has recently started home delivery for senior citizens in few localities of Delhi like Moti Bagh, Defence Colony and Greater Kailash, said Pradipta Sahoo, business head of Safal.