Professor Manmohan  Sodhi (Visiting Faculty, ISB and Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management, Cass Business School) , Sukhmeet Singh (Associate Director, Manufacturing and Public Policy) and Chetna  Agnihotri ( Analyst, Bharti Institute of Public Policy), discussed their work on:
 
“Cold Chain Development for Fruits and Vegetables in India- Kinnow supply chain study"
Fruit-and-Vegetable distribution in India suffers from significant post-harvest loss in the supply chain due to perishable nature of produce, sensitivity to handling damages, increasing distances between farms and urban clusters, and growing cross-geographical demand. Cold chain is one possible solution for reducing these post-harvest losses, and can help in increasing value of the produce by enabling out-of season sale and in far-away markets. The high cost of investment, dependence on other stakeholders and complexity in set-up could be some of the deterrents along the way.

A case study undertaken by Munjal Institute for Global Manufacturing provides an analysis of profitability for investing/using cold chain for the stakeholders involved. For this, a particular supply-chain was selected for a regionally popular fruit kinnow and the same was assessed with and without cold chain intervention. The carbon impact of the cold chain was also studied.

The presentation focused on discussing the relevance, findings and implications of this study. Read More