Ingersoll Rand, a world leader in creating and sustaining safe, comfortable and efficient environments, has announced its foray into the Cold Chain consultancy segment in India. India is the world's largest producer of milk; the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables, the third largest producer of food grain and fish. In a country where millions go hungry, India wastes 30-35 percent of its perishable produce consisting of fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry, milk and marine products, resulting in an estimated loss of US$ 11 Billion. This is largely due to the non-availability of an appropriate infrastructure- both static and mobile. A robust cold chain providing controlled temperature, humidity and gas control can prevent food loss.

Building the end-to-end cold chain infrastructure requires technical competency, system design and application processes that are specific to different types of perishable products. It needs design of both static and mobile infrastructure to enable delivery of fresh food from farm to fork. Specific interventions that are required include, inducing temperature controlled gas-flow, moisture content, thermal insulation and materials which all form an integral part of efficient cold chain design principles. Ingersoll Rand is a world leader in designing, developing, and implementing such solutions. These are particularly essential for emerging economies like India where the food wastage is high. Economics can only be justified through value generation and prevention of waste. The country has got differing temperature zones, soil conditions, crop growing patterns and rainfall especially for fruits and vegetables which make it an extremely complex process. The company sees it as an opportunity to provide its services to creators of cold chain infrastructure (both mobile and static), in terms of consultancy, design and technology interventions. Other areas where it can also offer its expertise are for pharma and horticulture.

Ingersoll Rand is also currently piloting reefer transportation models, which would be suitable for small farm holdings in rural India. Considering the poor road infrastructure that exists in the country, and increasing fuel prices, it has built energy efficient refrigeration systems that are mounted on small format vehicles that can be maneuvered to collect perishable produce both, for the first mile and the last mile.

The cold chain market size is estimated at Rs 800 crores, which is growing at the rate of 20%-22%. Ingersoll Rand aims to leverage this opportunity to provide consulting assistance in structural planning, storage knowledge, automation, cold chain transport, remote tracking and refrigeration. The company plans to provide a host of services and solutions to address issues of storage, transportation and delivery for perishable products.

Speaking on the occasion Mr Venkatesh Valluri, Chairman & President, Ingersoll Rand India said "Even though, India has embarked on laying standards for the Cold chain Industry, there is still a deficiency in following and designing processes towards building world class infrastructure because of lack of knowledge and technical competency. Ingersoll Rand intends to fill the gap in this space because it is a world leader and has developed, many of the industry best practices over a period of time through Responsible Consulting." He also added that the entire cold chain supply process, which involves delivery of perishable products from farm to fork, requires an optimization approach. Ingersoll Rand would help bridge the needs of such a chain."

Mr Manjunath MS, Leader - Business Creation, Cold Chain, Ingersoll Rand India, added "We aim to provide competitive leverage to our customers, through consulting assistance in structural planning, storage knowledge, automation, remote tracking and cold chain transport and refrigeration. Ingersoll Rand plans to provide a host of services and solutions to minimize loss of perishable products."