HYDERABAD: The Telangana Centre of Excellence for sustainable cooling and cold-chain, an initiative for accelerating the deployment of energy-efficient refrigeration for food and vaccine supply chains across India, was inaugurated by IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao at GMR Innovex Campus near GMR Airport on Wednesday.
This CoE is the outcome of an MoU signed between the Telangana government and the University of Birmingham in 2022. The university will serve as a knowledge partner and help develop the centre into a state-of-the-art research and innovation hub that will help deploy needs-driven and equitable system-level cooling and cold-chain solutions in Telangana and India.
Rama Rao said, “This CoE is a first-of-its-kind initiative in India which will have state–of–art equipment and will serve as a one-stop solution to address all challenges around the cold chain ecosystem in the country. It will also develop and demonstrate cooling technologies and solutions that meet the state’s needs.”
He thanked the University of Birmingham for choosing Hyderabad as well as industry partners including Carrier for supporting the initiative. The CoE will have a solutions development lab and demonstration centre, a model pack-house and community cooling hubs. Currently, many farmers are unable to sell their perishable produce as they lack access to cold storage facilities. Hence, this initiative will come up with solutions that will help farmers preserve perishable produce and improve the quality of goods.
Adopting a ‘hub and spoke’ model, the CoE will deliver upskilling and training programmes for farmers and local agri-businesses, agri-start-ups and entrepreneurs, equipment technicians and researchers. Telangana currently exports 4 billion USD worth of pharma and vaccine exports which are dependent on an efficient cold chain ecosystem.