The Cold Chain is a term applied to Food Handling and Distribution where the product is maintained at suitable temperature conditions all the way from harvesting, through the cooling or freezing process to the point of sale.

Why Cold Chain Management

Prevents Food loss

Food waste represents a loss of value, avoidable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and a challenge to food security. A comprehensive study conducted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) estimates that in the case of fruits, overall losses range from 5.8%to 18% while in the case of vegetables this range is between 6.8% to 12.98%. The food loss that occurs post-harvest and before connecting to markets, due to the inadequate and inefficient cold chain infrastructure, is effectively a loss of saleable volume and value. It is therefore an economic burden on the food supply system, in addition to leading to avoidable energy use and direct as well as indirect GHG emissions for the country.

• From the time of harvest, processing, packaging, and transporting loss of food occurs at every stage
• Catering to the demand it saves water, labour, and other resources to compensate the lost harvest

Job Creation

• This field is creating millions of jobs for the country.
• Warehouse operatives, drivers, system analysis, representatives, and importers down to the delivery man in the retail shop

Environmental Conservation

• Food waste is a global climate disaster.
• The world’s population wastes a third of the food produced
• Resulting in wasted carbon emission contributing largely to climate change

Urbanization

• Purchasing perishables has become easier with the click of buttons.
• We make an order and have it delivered. The cold chain has made many entrepreneurs open retail shops to sell chilled perishables.

Cold chain forms a critical link between farm and market

• An integrated cold chain is critical for connecting farmers to markets near and far
• Allowing them to extract more value from their produce, and helping improve their livelihoods, while reducing post-harvest food loss and waste

Cold chain and its importance

According to the NCCD definition, a cold chain is a temperature-controlled environment logistics chain, ensuring uninterrupted handling of products from source to user, consisting of storage and distribution-related activities in which the inventory is maintained within predetermined ambient parameters. Cold chain does not alter the essential characteristics of the produce or product handled13 and primarily offers two basic functions, namely preserving a product’s quality, and enhancing the product’s life.

A well-designed and integrated cold chain can be an enabler for the transformation of the Indian agricultural sector. It is also a means of addressing key issues in the agricultural sector such as low income of farmers due to poor quality of produce reaching the market, lack of storage facilities to cater to the different requirements of different produce in order to enhance their shelf life, lack of mechanization to sort, separate and grade the produce quickly to minimize degradation after picking, and low availability of high value and nutritious fruits and vegetables in the local market owing to the interrupted cold chain being unsuitable for their survival. According to the 2015 cold chain infrastructure capacity assessment undertaken by the National Centre for Cold Chain Development (NCCD) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, there are significant gaps in India’agricultural cold chain infrastructure. The India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP) projects significant growth in cold chain infrastructure. As ICAP notes, the cold chain sector offers an excellent opportunity for managing the cooling demand growth, as well as associated energy consumption and refrigerant requirement, through improved design, building material, cooling equipment and information technology. Even though there has been significant Even though there has been significant cold storage warehouse capacity addition in the recent years, development has been relatively limited in the other segments, especially transportation and packhouses, which are the first step in the cold chain, typically providing sorting, grading, washing, packaging, pre-cooling, and staging services. In fact, the 2015 NCCD study estimates there is a need for over 70,000 packhouses in India, compared to the 249 that were in place as of 2015. With the anticipated development of several thousand packhouses across the country by the government and the private sector, there is an opportunity to build in energy efficiency into the new infrastructure. The sustainable development of an integrated cold chain infrastructure, which is central to advancing farmers’ economic well-being, carries important co-benefits such as mitigating food losses, alleviating hunger, while avoiding unnecessary energy consumption and emissions.

Flow of Produce in a typical cold chain

Packhouses in India

A packhouse is the first step in the cold chain infrastructure, and a key element of value chains for produce for which maintaining cold temperature is a necessity. While cold chain infrastructure can preserve quality of the produce, it cannot reverse any damage or quality loss that happens before the produce reaches the first point of cold chain. Therefore, pre-cooling the produce to ensure early removal of field heat is one of the most critical steps for preserving quality and extending the shelf life of produce.

India’s packhouse infrastructure is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. There were about 500 packhouses across the country in 2019, while ICAP estimates that~55,000 packhouses will be developed over 2027-28. While actual trajectory of packhouse infrastructure development may vary depending on several factors such as market dynamics, consumer demand, and uptake of government policies, the estimates suggest that much of the investment for meeting the demand for packhouses is yet to be made. This presents an excellent opportunity for early action to ensure that packhouse infrastructure development happens in a resource-efficient and sustainable manner. The maintenance of required conditions in cold chain infrastructure is energy intensive.