India's Cold Storage Market Forecasted to Stand at US$ 8.57bn

As highlighted by Saddam Huq QA Senior Manager, Global Logistics and Cold Chain at GSK Vaccines in Belgium: "Asia is emerging as a global powerhouse in the healthcare industries. As we see the economic boom within the emerging countries, vaccines and biologics have become more accessible for the local markets."

Ryan Viegas, VP, Supply Chain & Procurement, Watson Pharma agrees that India is a growing economy with huge opportunities and for those who have the right approach success.

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However he reminds: "In terms of threats to the market, there is limited awareness and knowledge about temperature controlled logistics. With respect to logistics there are several bottlenecks, constraints like lack of sufficient cold storage space at airports, ports with limited infrastructure in terms of roads, and limited availability of compliant cold trucks. Being a large country the distances between the manufacturing to the ports / airport and local warehouses are significant."

Although, the cold storage market in India is currently in a state of growth according to the Cold Storage Market in India 2015-2020 research report and is expected to be worth US$ 8.57 billion by 2020.

Furthermore the pharma cold storage market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR rate of 16% in the next 5 years till 2020.

Saddam Huq QA Senior Manager, Global Logistics and Cold Chain at GSK Vaccines in Belgium notes: "India, viewed as one of the key growth markets, recognized its weak link by improving its provision at major airports, including Mumbai and Hyderabad, but cold chain facilities still pose a barrier with the unstable power supply to the development of the market in the country."

The report states that the cold storage market in India is highly fragmented with more than 3500 players in the unorganized sector and around 30 players in the organized sector.

India currently has 6156 cold storage facilities across various states with total capacity of 28.68 MMT which is insufficient – according to the report. Due to a lack of cold storage facilities, India has wastage of more than 450MMT every year which leads to a huge amount of loss, and leads to shortage in the overall generation capability.

The refrigerated transportation market which is the largest contributor to cold storage market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR rate of 17% in the next 5 years.

In regards to the ascent of the Asian market Saddam notes: "We see this trend as major Biotech Companies have strategically entered in partnership agreements with local pharmaceutical companies or set up manufacturing plants supplying the local markets. Alternatively, we also see strong ambitions from local Manufacturer’s in India such as ‘Serum Institute of India’ that are supplying vaccines to WHO globally."