Eat and live healthier


Food Processing Industry, Cold Chain and Frozen food distribution systems : A Brief

India has tremendous potential to become theamount of such agricultural produce that is
primary source of agricultural products, morewaste away. If there were cold storage
specifically food products in the world. Itsystems, efficient cold chain, logistics and
has about 53% of arable land - land availabledistribution companies, it could have been
for cultivation of crops as compared to apossible to process these primary products
measly average of about 11% for the rest ofinto newer, secondary products and resold to
the world. It has some feathers in it's capconsumers locally and internationally. A
as the second highest fruit and vegetablestrategy needs to be carved out for the
producer in the world, 6th largest producergrowth of this industry and a lot of
of fish and such like but still doesn't makeinvestment action is yet to see some real
up to the top 10 food exporting countries.Ifaction.
it weren't for some severe infrastructure and
technology issues, there is actually stoppingInvestment in cold storage, cold chain
for this gigantic food bowl. With largedistribution, installation of food processing
tracts of arable land, inexpensive labour andplants across the country, applied research
high-quality produce tumbling out of theon harvesting technologies an a rapid
barns, there is a potential so huge thatdevelopment of the food retail industry are
sometimes, the scope and scale is almostall necessary steps that would ensure an
unbelievable.organic  growth  in  this  sector.
However, if one had to point out at oneWhat  is  Cold  Chain?
single single reason as to why the Indian
agricultural industry is such a laggard whenA cold chain is basically a logistics system,
pitted against the global standards, it couldwhich helps in maintaining and providing a
be the pathetic state of the logistics,series of facilities for ensuring ideal
distribution and and an inefficient supplystorage conditions for the persihables from
chain. India faces an acute problem of largethe point of origin to the point of sale. A
amounts of food wasted away due to the lackwell developed and efficiently organized cold
of a proper cold storage, cold chain andchain reduces wastage, spoilage and helps
frozen food distribution system. If only thiskeeps the perishables intact thereby helping
was in place, huge amounts of food could haveto maintain the quality of the harvested food
been processed into some kind of value addedproducts ultimately making the whole system
foods and sold both locally andcost effective to the farmers and that which
abroad.Annually, there is usually a largeensures top-notch quality to the end user.



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