C38 - Deployment of Solar Powered Reefer Containers to Support South Asian Cold Chain

About 30% of fruits and vegetables grown in South Asia (India - 40 million tonnes amounting to US$13 billion) gets wasted annually due to gaps in Cold Chain like poor infrastructure, insufficient cold storage capacity, unavailability of cold storages in close proximity to farms, poor transportation infrastructure etc. Levels of production have been boosted with crop rotation, soil conservation, pest control, fertilizers, irrigation etc. But, Post-harvest issues have been addressed inadequately. About 30-35% of these losses can be reduced by transporting the freshly harvested fruits and vegetables in refrigerated containers thus closing this gap in the cold chain. We would need about 40,000 TEUs of refrigerated containers placed in farms all across the country with about 0.5 million sq. metres of solar PV panels valued at US$ 1.1 billion fixed on their rooftops, to transport this freshly harvested produce, Commercially, the payback period for this project is quite attractive.