Experts moot policy on cold chains, warehousing

Perishable items like dairy, fruits and seafood going waste

Experts in air-conditioning and refrigeration are batting for a comprehensive policy to promote investments in cold chains and warehousing to prevent huge wastage of perishable items like food grains, seafood, dairy and fruit products.

In a place like Visakhapatnam, a leading fish landing centre with exports amounting to over ₹7,000 crore, there are only a few food processing and cold chain facilities forcing many to cut tuna and other fish unscientifically not able to get the price they deserve in export market.

According to conservative estimates, only 4% of the country’s fresh produce is transported in cold chain. The rest has to be delivered locally and eaten quickly or it simply goes waste. To bring about a change, experts are for facing the steep challenge of increasing cold chain capacity.

Incidentally, over half of the country’s 6,300 cold storage facilities are located in Maharashtra, Gujarat and few other States. The facility has to be provided in areas where it is not available, according to process refrigeration expert Manish A. Kulkarni of Pune-based Trust Corporation.

Mr. Kulkarni, who was here to attend a conference on refrigeration and cold chain solutions towards sustainability, told The Hindu that India is the world’s leading producer of milk and the second-largest producer of fruits and vegetables and also sizeable exports of sea food but nearly 20% of that yield was going waste for want of food supply infrastructure to keep it fresh from farm to table. Indian Society of Heating, Refrigeration and AC Engineers (ISHRAE) Vizag chapter former president B. Madhu said the country needed an investment in the range of $6 to $10 billion over the next five to 10 years on infrastructure excluding the cost of land and a few additional components.

He welcomed the establishment of

National Centre for Cold Chain Development as a hub to train the country in strategic development as well as to train the country’s cold chain stakeholders and lauded the State government’s initiative to establish a cold chain corporation to provide facilities to maintain ideal storage conditions for perishables from the point of origin to the point of consumption in the food supply chain as the farmers were suffering losses of up to 30% to 35% due to lack of cold chain facilities.

Madurai-based business head of Sree Engineering N. Bala said existing warehousing and cold chain owners should also be given incentives and encouraged for collaboration to modernise their infrastructure.