E-Paper
Retail boom warms up cold storage biz
THE retail boom has thrown up a never-before opportunity for the city?s cold storage owners. A large number of smaller state-of-art cold storages are in various stages of construction within the city?s municipal limits for storing items ranging from chocolates, ice-cream, milk products to even ?khoya?, the essential raw material for making a wide variety of sweets.
THE retail boom has thrown up a never-before opportunity for the city’s cold storage owners.
A large number of smaller state-of-art cold storages are in various stages of construction within the city’s municipal limits for storing items ranging from chocolates, ice-cream, milk products to even ‘khoya’, the essential raw material for making a wide variety of sweets.
“A 25 per cent subsidy provided by the State government for technology upgradation of cold storages has proven to be an incentive for cold storage owners in Lucknow to start setting up smaller units for catering to the needs of private sector majors planning their retail foray in the city,” Mahendra Swarup, president of Cold Storage Association of Uttar Pradesh, told HT Lucknow Live.
“About 70 per cent of the capacity additions in the cold storages in the entire state over the next two years would happen in smaller units which are being set up by cold storage owners who already own larger capacity units in the state,” he said.
He said cold storage owners across the state are being approached by retailing giants with queries such as what items could be stored in the cold storages or technical specifications pertaining to cooling capacity of various units.
Swarup said the older cold storage chains numbering about 14 in the city were also in the list of private players looking for storage space for perishable items.
“Contrary to popular belief that funding is not available for setting up of new cold storages, the various banks in the state had already been extending credit for setting up of new units across the state,” he said.
However, there had been logistic constraints on the part of the transporters of the perishable items to deliver perishable items at the already existing cold storages within Lucknow during the daytime hours.
“The ban on entry of trucks in the city during daytime is making farmers opt for cold storages located on the city’s outskirts for storing agricultural produce. “A farmer is not willing to stay awake the entire night for ensuring the transportation of agricultural produce to cold storages within the city’s municipal limits,” Swarup said.
The inability of the farmers to ensure storage of perishable items in cold storages within the city’s municipal limits during daytime had forced the closure of a large number of cold storages in Amausi. Nishatganj, Mahanagar, Chowk and Thakurganj during the past few years, he said.
The State government must work out alternative plans to let the surviving cold storages with the city’s municipal limits receive the agricultural produce from the farmers during daytime, Swarup added.
