According to a recent report by Technavio, the market size of perishable goods transportation is slated to grow by $6.43 billion, accelerating at a CAGR of 7.22% during the forecast period. Interestingly, 42% of the market growth will come from APAC (Asia Pacific) during the forecast period, owing to a growing demand for fresh, convenient processed, and packaged food and lifestyle items.

The UN has estimated that about 40% of food produced in India is wasted at the cost of billions of dollars per year, owing to fragmented food systems, lack of infrastructure, and inefficient supply chains.

Sakthivarman R, VP of Operations at Snowman Logistics said, “Yes, capacity issues, lack of reefer trucks, and inadequate infrastructure for cold storage facilities are major challenges for perishable logistics, especially in emerging economies. The demand for processed food, fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, and bio-pharmaceuticals in export as well domestic markets has increased post-pandemic and these challenges are not helping.”

By implementing digitization, and inventory management, the logistics of perishable goods have become more efficient. Gubba Kiran, CEO of Gubba Cold Storage said, “The future of logistics is technology. One must rely on logistics for impeccable last-mile delivery. Transparency, minute tracking, IoT, Blockchain, and robotic operations have to be inculcated for effective logistic solutions.”

“With passive solutions in packaging now getting accepted by the trade and with the advent of a new start-up culture that embraces this technology, the growth of perishable logistics is bound to happen." - Pranav Malik, WIZ Freight

“The cost of air freight for heavy goods is much higher than by sea freight, but most minimum-order quantities are too great for the risk involved. There is increased flexibility in perishable air freight cargo.” - Mark Alzawahra, Catch of Norway

"Airfreight is very cost-prohibitive, it is almost 6-7 times higher than road transport and it (price) gets unnecessarily loaded to the consumer when we sell the product. There is however a lot of work being done in air freight in terms of increase in capacity."- GLN Murthy, iD Fresh Food

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