25 Mar 2014

APO Cold-chain Workshop

APO's first Workshop on Cold-chain (2014)
Talking Points at Asian Productivity Organisation Workshop in New Delhi - co-hosted by National Productivity Council and NCCD.

- As you are aware, all raw food is sourced at harvest – be it livestock, fish, dairy, agriculture or horticulture. In India, a largely vegetarian country, horticulture is a major source of high value food.

- Horticultural produce (which is primarily perishable in nature), intrinsically requires the integration of activities during its post-harvest life cycle. Any breach in the required set of activities, results in loss of the produce – physically or in its value realisation.

- These losses cannot merely be attributed to a short life cycle due to the lack of temperature controlled logistics. A major cause of food loss also stems from flawed handling - poor hygiene practices, packaging not suitable to the distances the produce has to travel, bottlenecks and delays due to multilayered transactions.