Cold chains in India are hot!

The country has a huge opportunity to become a leading global food supplier if only it has the right marketing strategies and of course efficient supply & cold chains management. The food supply chain is complex with perishable goods and numerous small stake holders. In India, the infrastructure connecting these partners is very weak. Also, demand forecasting is totally absent and the farmers try to push what they produce into the market. The cold chains segment can be subdivided into a number of sectors agriculture, horticulture, fisheries & aquaculture, dairy, processed food for ready-to-eat / cook format together with the packaging companies, retailers, wholesalers and caterers are in the last stage of the cold chains. Against a requirement of over 31 million tonnes of cold storage, India has over 5,101 cold storage units with a cumulative capacity of nearly 21.7 million tonnes, leading to a loss of about 40% of the agri-produce post-harvest. The Indian cold chains market is largely untapped and lined by several players in the unorganised sector which clues for immense investment and development opportunities. Further, the diversity in terms of Indias population with several religious groups with different food habits and culture can be used to the advantage to become the Halal food hub, the Organic food hub, the Vegetarian food hub the Sea food hub and so on. Currently, the Indian cold chain market is worth $2.6 billion. This market is expected to grow to $12.4 billion by 2015. Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have 65% of the total installed capacity of cold storage in the country. Cold chains are used primarily for fruits and vegetables, meat and marine products, floriculture, dairy products, ice creams and confectionery. In the Vision 2015 paper, food processing minister Subodh Kant Sahai said the focus needed to be on areas of reducing post-harvest losses, building supply chain, cold chain, and developing linkages of farming to the processing industry. Particularly, the need of the hour is to adopt a strategy whereby cold storage facilities are provided collectively to production centres as Cold Storage Centres with potential strengths for storing primary and processed agricultural products for most of the year. This should be supplemented with a good system of refrigerated transportation connecting farm level storage facilities, processing units and various distribution outlets as the present system of transporting by insulated trucks is not effective for long distance movement. At the retail outlet end, there is a need to develop display cabinets for marketing of frozen food products. India should also augment cold chain facilities and container handling facilities at major ports as also at air cargo complexes for targeting global markets. All this will not only need large-scale investments but also the development of appropriate technology more suitable to our requirements, the minister said.