According to Ravichandran Purushothaman, president of Danfoss Industries, the Indian arm of the Nordborg, Denmark-headquartered Danfoss, the company is riding a boom in India’s cold-chain infrastructure.
Purushothaman, told Business Line, “The heart of the cold chains is with us,” noting that Danfoss’ cold-chain-related business grew between 20 and 25 per cent since 2014. “There is no recession in this industry,” he added.
In the past 3 years, India added over 4.5 million tons of cold-chain capacity. Today, the cold chain infrastructure is a $16 billion industry in India and is growing at 20 percent. Danfoss says that India has 6,300 cold-storage facilities — two-thirds of which are in the states of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal — with a capacity to hold 30 million tons of products.
The country needs about 60,000 packhouses close to the farmlands where agricultural produce can be brought, cleaned, graded, and stored in cold rooms for a few days until they are dispatched to the markets, as well as 10,000 ‘ripening chambers’, where fruits can be ripened safely and scientifically.
