Cold Chain Quickie #15- 5-Star Hotels To Grow Veggies In Their Backyard

A number of 5-star hotels are investing in kitchen gardens in order to avoid import of expensive fruits and vegetables from foreign markets, thereby cutting costs while maintaining high quality. Such farms are being developed in their backyards where a variety of high quality fruits and vegetables are being grown while ensuring best farming standards and world class techniques. The upcoming ITC Grand Bharat Golf & Spa Resort in Manesar near Gurgaon will have an 11-acre farm where it will grow vegetables and herbs, and train the hotel’s chefs on the flavours of India. Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai has acquired a farmland near Mumbai, where it grows vegetables such as heirloom tomatoes.

5-Star Hotels in India have started growing vegetables locally saving them lots of money. Photo Credits: Flickr User – William Leonard

50 percent of all the profits of luxury hotels come from food and beverage sales. Exporting veggies from foreign markets is becoming increasingly expensive. By growing vegetables in-house, hotels can save almost 50% of the total cost by saving up on transportation, packaging, storage and import duties.

Read More: 5-Star Hotels Growing Own Veggies

DISCLAIMER: Pictures used for representation purpose only

Chotukool – Innovation in the Dairy Supply Chain (3)

Chotukool, the most portable refrigerator yet. Picture Credits: Outlook

80% of Indian households do not have refrigerators. A large number of people simply cannot afford refrigeration while many others lack the availability of reliable electrical power supply. In our previous posts on Mitticool and Innovation in the Dairy Supply Chain we discussed products that haven been innovated for rural India’s needs and are going to impact thousands of lives positively. This post is about another such product, this time from one of India’s oldest companies, Godrej.

Chotukool is a 45-liter plastic container that can cool food to around 8 to 10 degrees on a 12-volt battery. Abandoning the compressor technology used in domestic fridges, it uses a thermo-electric or solid state cooling system. It does not have a front opening door but opens from the top to ensure that the maximum amount of cool air remains in the container when opened.

Chotukool is improving the quality of life in rural households in India. Perishables such as fruits, vegetables and dairy products can be preserved for longer durations whereas the costs involved are significantly low. It also makes way for business opportunities as more vendors can now sell chilled beverages at their shops and stalls. Chotukool weighs just 8 KGs and hardly takes up any space, which is why some people prefer to take chotukool along with them on their vehicles for travelling long distances. The refrigerator is easily able to handle 12 hours of cooling when not connected to electrical power and running on battery.

Chotukool serves all the purposes of a regular refrigerator while being extremely portable and cheap. Its set to impact the lives of millions of Indians positively.

Picture Credit: Gizmag.com

References: Chotukool Website, WIPO

Mitticool – Innovation in the Dairy Supply Chain (2)

A refrigerator that’s made completely of clay, that uses no electricity and still keeps food fresh for weeks! 

In our previous post – Completing the Cold Chain at the collection point, we talked about how Promethean Power Systems, a company founded by two-American entrepreneurs is bringing innovative products to rural India to strengthen the Milk supply chain. But innovation doesn’t always have to come from research labs or huge-companies. Meet one of our own desi-inventors.

Prajapati Mansukhbhai Raghavjibhai is a simple potter from Wankaner, Gujarat who sells a refrigerator made of Mitti (mud) that cools everything right from fruits and vegetables to milk and water, without requiring any electricity. He charges a mere Rs. 2,500 for a clay-based refrigerator that is believed to keep water-chilled, and fruits and vegetables fresh for weeks.

Mansukhbhai Raghavjibhai, inventor from Wankaner, Gujarat.

He got inspired to make Mitticool after the Gujarat earthquakes of 2001, when he saw how the poor people around him do not have the means to afford electrical appliances. Mansukhbhai realized that earthen pots are a poor man’s refrigerator and that he needs to find a way to make the best refrigerator he could make out of clay.

It took him four years to get the combination right, mixing and churning different types of clay in different proportions. He hit the jackpot with an unusual addition of sawdust and sand, which makes the soil porous and the interiors cold. And Mitticool was born-

Mitticool is divided into two compartments- the top half is a tank that stores water which in turn cools the lower half where milk and vegetables are stored. The magic really lies in the clay that is used to make Mitticool, the composition of which has been kept secret. But all we care about is that it works perfectly well.

From raw clay to a finished refrigerator, it takes just a week to make Mitticool. Mansukhbhai sells 60-70 units of Mitticool a month to buyers from all across India. Although Chennai and Hyderabad have recorded the highest number of sales. Under this brand name he is also producing water filters, pressure cookers, and non-stick tawas all made of clay. He has received offers from retail brands like Relaince for Mitticool but he thinks that marketing through retail chains might push the prices up, thereby defeating his very idea behind making Mittcool.

Mansukhbhai continues on his mission for bringing cheap, safe and reliable cooling-tools for the poor in India.

References – Mitticool,  NDTV

Cold Chain Quickie #12 – The Search for the Coolest Refrigerator

In the search for the coolest refrigeration technology we chanced upon a high tech cooler, which has 60 quarts of space, an 18-volt ice crushing blender, a removable waterproof Bluetooth speaker, USB input for charging devices, an LED Light for finding items in the dark, a cutting board, gear tie-down equipment, storage for plates, a bottle opener and extra wide rolling tires. Plus its available in orange and even on-demand colours. We found the swiss army knife of coolers!!

We now know what we are carrying on our next camping trip!!

Click on the link to learn more about ‘Coolest’,  High tech cooler will be the coolest thing at your party.

Read On: Mashable –High tech cooler will be the coolest thing at your party 

Completing The Cold Chain at the Collection Point – Innovation In The Dairy Supply Chain

India is the largest producer of milk in the world (Source: Food Navigator – Asia, Quartz), producing about 17% of all the world’s milk each year. The country produced just over 130 million tonnes of milk in the year 2012-13 compared to  63 million tonnes from 20 years ago (1993). Milk yield in India has grown at 4% per annum since the last decade, a rate that is almost double of what other countries have been able to achieve.

The country’s dairy industry is dominated by individual farmers who usually own a few cows or buffaloes and travel each morning to local milk collection centers in order to sell-off their daily produce. They are forced to commute each morning as they lack any refrigeration systems in their own homes and farms. While refrigeration is a vital parts of the milk supply chain, Indian dairy farmers are unable to afford refrigeration due to high input costs.

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The milk collection centers face difficulties concerning refrigeration due to power-cuts and shortages in rural areas. For these reasons, diesel-based generators are used to power the refrigeration systems. But diesel proves both economically and environmentally un-favourable, and milk still cannot be stored for long periods of time without refrigeration. The longer the milk sits without refrigeration the faster the quality of the milk deteriorates. The crucial element in the milk/ dairy supply chain is how quickly can the product temperature of Milk be dropped from +35 Degrees Celsius to 4 Degrees Celsius.

Rapid Milk Chiller – An Innovation on the Milk Supply Chain

Promethean Power Systems, founded by MIT graduate Sorin Grama along with Sam White is a US based company that focuses on innovating products that can impact millions of people positively. Promethean’s Rapid Milk Chiller, is a dome-shaped machine that couples to a thermal energy battery to cool milk from 35°C to 4°C. The rapid milk chiller cools the milk by means of a heat exchange with cold fluid inside the dome. When electrical power is not available, the rapid milk chiller can cool up to 500 liters of milk using only the thermal energy stored in the battery.

Chillers can be installed at village collection centers where farmers can deposit their milk produce. Each chiller can store upto 40 liters of milk that can be kept in the market for as long as two weeks. With this chiller, milk gets a longer shelf life, the quantity of milk sold increases due to less wastage and the villagers benefit from increased incomes. The milk chiller also saves the burden of daily trips to collection centers that the farmers were earlier forced to make.

Only 80,000 tonnes of cold-storage is available in India for the 130 million tonnes of milk that is produced each year. For a country that wastes billions worth of perishables each year, the rapid milk chiller is a giant step in address the missing the link in the Milk Supply Chain via an innovative application of refrigeration and reduced power needs.

Picture: Rapid Milk Chiller (Promethean Power Systems)

References: Promethean Power Systems – Website, MIT Grad Brings Refrigerator To India, BBC – When good milk turns bad, Quartz – India’s 75 million dairy farms now produce more milk than the EU