Leading European companies today offered their expertise to set up cold storage chains in India, where an estimated Rs 70,000 crore worth of crops go waste every year for want of proper warehousing facilities.
Over a dozen cold chain warehouse companies from the Netherlands, France and Belgium joined over two dozen Indian companies at a two-day cold chain expo organised by the Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA), which was inaugurated by the Ambassador of the Netherlands to India, Bob Hiensch, and Food and Processing Industry Secretary Ashok Sinha here today.
The exhibition aims to provide a platform for knowledge-sharing on innovative new technologies and practices in the field.
Hiensch said despite being a small country, the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural produce in the world. He offered the cooperation of his country to build cold chain warehouses in India.
Sinha emphasised on the need to augment cold chain storage capacity in the country and suggested that banks should provide easy loans to farmers for the purpose.
The Indian cold chain market is presently worth $2.6 billion and is expected to grow to $12.4 billion by 2015. There is tremendous scope of attracting FDI in cold chain warehousing.
India is the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world, producing 63.5 million tonnes of fruits and 125.89 million tonnes of vegetables every year.