food and beverage

A consumer revolution is taking place in India as people change their eating habits and shopping patterns. While fresh foods have long been a staple
more people are putting a premium on speed and convenience. Supermarkets and shopping malls are cropping up everywhere
and sales of consumer-ready frozen foods are burgeoning
from ice cream and frozen entrees
to vegetables
fruits
sea foods and meats.

To meet this rising demand
manufactures and retailers of temperature sensitive products must move their perishable foods quickly
while emphasizing quality
safety
reliability
and traceability. This is a real challenge in a country where the cold-chain infrastructure still needs a lot of work to be done. India’s cold chain infrastructure is fragmented
under funded
and scrambling to keep up with soaring demand. The need of the hour is to address these concerns immediately.

The frozen food distribution is still not stabilized as most of the companies are still finding it difficult for service and are adopting the most rudimentary method of delivery of frozen/chilled foods to the trade. This
basically means that the integrity of the cold chain is being compromised. However
at this moment
the focus seems to be on survival and most of the companies are first interested in building volumes before they can provide high-class facilities for distribution of frozen/chilled products.

We at SNOWMAN
are now looking at expanding our network in terms of scale and reach if we are to compete at the domestic or international level. Our focus is to provide every requisite cold chain related solution to the customers but seeing the opportunity in F&V sector
definitely our focus would be more towards fruits and vegetables sector in the days to come along with new avenues like temperature controlled pharmaceutical products etc.

We are eagerly watching the prospects of large corporate like Reliance
Bharti
Aditya Birla Group
Mahindra & Mahindra
TATA and ITC etc to formulate and implement their retailing plan which will immensely benefit the cold chain industry. In my opinion
the cold chain industry will automatically grow as soon as the organized retail starts fully in place. All other difficulties will get resolved in due course of time. However basically what we need
is the consumer walking into a retail store and looking for chilled/frozen food products. This is the day when the cold chain industry will start moving forward and we have already seen the glimpse of it.