Efficient and Sustainable Cold Chain to Reduce Food Loss & Help India Achieve SDGs

CII’s Food and Agriculture Center of Excellence (FACE) organized a Special Plenary Session focusing on System interventions and adoption of post-harvest management for a robust Agri supply chain on December 16, 2021. The Special Plenary was followed by the 6th CII Cold Chain Awards.

Addressing the Plenary Session, Amrit Lal Meena, Special Secretary- Logistics, Ministry of Commerce and Industry said that “A well-developed sustainable cold chain network will help in the reduction of wastage, improve value addition, promote crop diversification, ensure better return to the farmers, and also address critical issues of food security and food inflation”.

Supplementing his views, B. Thiagarajan, Managing Director, Blue Star Limited mentioned “Ensuring delivery through Multi-modal logistics is important to strengthen the post-harvest management across all the touchpoints of the supply chain.”

Need of Effective Cold Supply Chain:

An effective cold supply chain will also have a direct impact on the economy. P. Ravichandran, Chairman, CII Task Force on Post-Harvest & Logistics; and President, Danfoss Industries Private Limited, said that “Refrigerated supply-chain logistics is critical towards achieving sustainable development goals of clean climate and is a key enabler for achieving the 5 trillion-dollar economy”.

Towards ensuring an effective and viable cold chain, it is important to keep pace with the necessary infrastructure development, commodity-specific protocols development, promoting technological innovations, dovetailing of various schemes, alignment between the various ministries for financial outlay and business model restructuring.

Addressing the Plenary, Dr. Antje C. Berger, Counsellor, Climate and Environment, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in India, mentioned that the “German government is committed to support the mitigation of environmental risk by providing resources for capacity development and investment which will include the exchange of sustainable best practices in logistics and cold chain technology”.

The day saw the launch of Technical Specification Documents for Cold Chain Infrastructure and Commodity Specific Post-Harvest Protocols, developed under the aegis of the CCLRC. Going forward, the CCLRC will continue working towards promoting green technologies, piloting community cooling solutions and build the capacity of the sector in India.

Highlighting the importance of sustainability, Lily Riahi, Coordinator, Cool Coalition, Energy and Climate Branch, UNEP, mentioned that “Cool Coalition is working towards developing sustainable business models like community cooling at village level to impact food loss, environmental sustainability, and energy efficiency”.

The day ended with the announcement of the winners of the CII Cold Chain Awards 2021. The Award ceremony was a significant forum to recognize the outstanding performers in the categories of Cold Storage, Integrated Supply Chain solutions, Packhouse, Innovations and FPOs in Cold Chain.

Winners of CII Cold Chain Awards 2021:

The Award for Outstanding Performance in Cold Storage was won by APM Terminal India Pvt Ltd, Chennai Unit for world-class infrastructure and well-defined processes and operations the unit stands apart.

The Award for Outstanding Performance in Integrated Supply Chain Solution was won by Cold Man Warehousing and Distribution (Sricity Unit)

The award for Outstanding performance in Packhouse was won by Magnus Farm Fresh LLP (Nashik) for their well-defined PHM processes, automated systems, and clean packing lines.

Other winners of Significant Achievement included-

• Aimijay Agri Fresh LLP for the Cold Storage Category

• Adani Agri Fresh for the Integrated Supply Chain Solution category

• SK Cold Storage for the Packhouse category

Awards in FPO Segment:

To encourage the most important segment of Agri supply chain, this year CII introduced the Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) as a segment for the awards.

Tamil Nadu Banana Producer Company won the Award for Outstanding performance among the FPOs.

The FPOs recognized for significant achievement included:

• Vizhuthugal Agricultural Farmers Producer Company

• Hunagunda Horticulture FPCL

• Shri Amaranarayana Horticulture Farmer producer Company Limited

• The Amrita Dhara Milk Producer Marketing Cooperative Society Ltd

• Gaukaran Farmers Producer Co Ltd

The award and recognition have enabled innovation & integration in the supply chain and thus there is a substantial interest towards these awards which is growing year on year.