Cooling solutions chill Mumbai
The seventh edition of India Cold Chain Show 2018, held in Mumbai from December 13-15, gave the industry a chance to witness innovative cooling solutions in the food and pharma business, and shared eye-opening insights into the sector through brilliant business sessions.
The three-day mega trade exhibition ‘India Cold Chain Show 2018’ organised from December 13 to 15, at the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Mumbai, attracted thousands of professionals and trade visitors from across India, specially Maharashtra and Gujarat. The oneof-its-kind event showcased the entire range of solutions and services for cold storage infrastructure, material handling, AIDC solutions, refrigeration, temperature control, cold transport, cold logistics, and supply chain for diverse industries with cold chain-intensive business operations.
CHALLENGES IN FOOD LOSS
Day one started with a session related to the food industry that highlighted the challenges the industry faced in terms of food loss. Moderated by K Rathnam, Former MD, Amul Dairy, the session had four panellists from different arenas of the food business. He said that Amul started the cold chain at the farm level to ensure that there was little or no loss of milk.
To this, Charles Devlin D’Costa, Chief Sales Officer – Cold Chain, DHL SmarTrucking, India, said, “To understand the challenges, we must look at how India operates in the perishable market. We need to look at how we can increase the shelf life of the product. Between the famer and the consumer, there are about six to seven intermediaries, which inevitably leads to 40 per cent of wastage of the total produce across sectors and perishables.” According to him, India has about 2352 storage facilities and about 48 per cent of it is concentrated in Uttar Pradesh, and about 26 per cent in West Bengal.
“There is also very little being done in India in terms of policy-making and support from the government for modernisation of cold chain. This means cold chain in India has
To understand the challenges, we must look at how India operates in the perishable market
huge potential. We are investing huge amounts of money in this area. We ensure we pick up from the source and deliver it ourselves. As a result, we have seen about 20-30 per cent reduction in loss,” D’Costa added.
Ashutosh Taparia, Regional Business Head, BigBasket, also nodded agreement to the challenge of concentration of cold chain units. “My biggest pain point in the past was that there was no ‘Uberisation’ of the cold chain and I could not get a reverse load. So, we developed that supply chain and now we can supply two-way loads.”
Sharing a perspective from someone who caters mainly to hotels and restaurants – a segment that has a huge focus on fresh ingredients – was Rohit Malhotra, Business Head – India, Barcelos. He said, “Our wastage was less than 0.5 per cent as against the industry level of two per cent. That was only possible because of the cold storage facilities we use.“ Haryana-based ZappFresh, a start-up that is now more than three years old, has dealt with multiple challenges when selling fresh meat online.
Speaking about the challenges that he has dealt with, Deepanshu Manchanda, Co-Founder & CEO, ZappFresh, said that cold chain is still a big deal for the largest meat market in New Delhi. “It faces a lot of infrastructure issues and lack of knowledge when it comes to cold chain, and India still has a long way to go for our category,” Manchanda added.
While he feels that there isn’t much progress in that area yet in India, public-private partnerships will go a long way in resolving wastage issues. “Our perishability is for three days but we don’t even keep it for one day. The first mile is most crucial. For the last mile, we use bikers, gel packs, and temperaturecontrolled boxes. But the first mile deterioration is permanent. Unfortunately, there are no cost-effective solutions for small players like us. There are still more lessons to be learnt, some basic, for instance, there is a lot of usage of ice but the water for this ice is also contaminated,” Manchanda said.
While temperature-controlled vehicles would be an ideal choice as part of the cold chain, the transport cost increases the total cost by at least 40-50 per cent. D’Costa from DHL added, “Even if the industry does use this type of transport, I have often found that the drivers are not skilled. They can read road signs in English but not the temperature that needs to be maintained. So, addressing the skill and training issue here is very important.”
Adding to possible solutions to this problem, Taparia of BigBasket, said, “Uberisation in this sector is needed. Cross-contamination is another problem that needs to be dealt with. Once we know and understand the actual problem, we can use technology to solve it.”