Indian entrepreneur taps regional demand for fresh food by air mail

An Indian entrepreneur has launched an air freight business to ship fresh Japanese vegetables and fish to mainland Asia.
The service is growing popular with Japanese agricultural cooperatives and catalog-based retailers who sell organic vegetables and are eager to cash in on growing demand for Japanese produce among the wealthy.
Pankaj Garg, 44, president of Innovation Thru Energy Co., a venture based in Tokyo's Marunouchi business district, launched the service in August in a tieup with Japan Airlines Corp.
The key to keeping the products fresh is a special refrigeration method powered by an "ice battery," which can keep produce at a constant temperature much longer than dry ice through the use of multiple refrigerant plates.
The battery works like a "cooling pillow" used to provide relief to people who have fevers. Prior to shipping, it is cooled in a freezer.
Garg majored in information technology at an Indian university before coming to Japan in 1988 to work for a major steel company.
It was in 2006 that he came upon the ice battery system developed by a Taiwanese research institute and decided to develop a system that would allow Japanese growers to export their products to first-class hotels and well-off Asian consumers.
Bankrupt JAL, which is aiming to develop a business for transporting high-class foodstuffs by air as part of its turnaround efforts, took note of Garg. In the summer of 2009, Japan Airlines International Co. came calling.
Ryuhei Nomoto, manager of the company's marketing division, was initially skeptical of the ice battery's reliability. But an experiment proved that the preset temperature inside the storage box containing the battery could be maintained even in flight.
20/09/10 Kyodo News/Japan Times

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Cargo Sep 2010, Foreign Sep 2010, New Sep 2010