Growing in stature, reefer trucks in India are addressing the dynamic market requirements by tapping technology.

Story by Deepti Thore and Deven Lad 

It is early February and the temperatures in Mumbai have started to rise. The onset of summer is in sight, and the Novel Coronavirus is yet to reach the shores of this country. The buzz about the virus disrupting the flow of goods from abroad is already prevalent. A trader of frozen food at the APMC market, Navi Mumbai, is candid in stating that his supplies are fast drying up. He points at the spread of Novel Coronavirus abroad, and remarks that the days ahead look tough. Pointing at the reefer truck standing in front of his shop, he says that this could well be the last of the supplies that has reached him via the Nhava Sheva port. One look at the reefer truck on an Eicher chassis, and it is at once evident that they are growing in stature. A part of the cold chain industry that is pegged at Rs.1,288 billion in India, reefer trucks are gaining focus as they address the dynamic requirement of their operators and end users.
Showing good potential to grow over the last two to three years, the cold chain industry has come to lap modern reefer trucks that assure reliable and safe transport. With players like Rivigo said to be ramping up their count of reefer trucks in the fleet with the ambition to reach 2500 numbers (by 2021) from 250 numbers (in 2016), reefer trucks have been growing in technology above all. Technologies like IoT and automation are aiding reefer trucks to gain in performance, efficiency, reliability and lower operating costs. As big organised sector retail chains like Reliance Fresh, Adani Group, Aditya Birla Group, and wholesale mandi players, come on the scene and demand prompt and reliable service, reefer trucks are shifting into the fast lane.

Fast and innovative

On an Eicher truck chassis, Rinac India displayed a eutectic reefer truck at the recent Cold Chain Show in Mumbai under its Chill Kart portfolio. It is a part of the line of eutectic trucks the company has developed to transport goods with temperatures between – 15 degree Celsius and – 25 degree Celsius. Innovative because it makes a green and economic alternative to a conventional reefer van in the last mile space, the eutectic tech involves eutectic plates placed within the insulated body. Requiring no fuel or energy for refrigeration during transport, the RPUF insulation provides effective heat transfer resistance and the vacuum bonded GRP sheets ensure lowered weight (thereby increasing payload capacity). The eutectic plates, at the other end, provide enough cooling to do away with the need to use a cooling fan type evaporator unit. Temperatures are maintained for 10 to 12 hours, and the refrigeration unit runs on solar energy.

Enough energy efficient to support government’s ambition to double the income of farmers and improve the cold chain efficient manifolds, eutectic reefer truck technology is in good demand. Many reefer truck manufacturers from the organised side of the trade have come to develop reefer trucks with this technology.
On a slightly different note, consider the two Mahindra Bolero pickup trucks that Subzero Insulation Technologies displayed at the Cold Chain Show as well. They are designed for the last-mile, and have their bodies made of light-weight fibre-glass material from Lamilux, Germany. The material ensures leakage-free and well-sealed container structure. It also ensures a structure that is shockproof, resistant to bending, weatherproof, suitable for food stuff carriage and extremely light. A close look at the Lamilux light-weight fibre-glass offerings, and there’s the Lamilux Antibac, Lamilux Super, Lamilux HG4000, Lamilux Woven Roving, Lami Graph, Lamilux High-impact and Lamilux X-Treme. Each is unique in terms of the advantages it offers in the construction of not just reefer trucks, but also in the construction of motor homes, cold storages, well-insulated homes and offices among others. Built from Lamilux material, the refrigerated container superstructures on the Boleros feature different flooring options like GRP anti-slip material, aluminium ‘T’ grated, aluminium or SS chequered, removable and washable HDPE tiles and stainless steel corrugated sheets. Customised as per the requirement of the customers, reefer trucks offered by Subzero Insulation Technologies could be had with eutectic systems as well. They could be had with dry freight boxes and multi-temperature boxes as well. Stress, mentioned a company source, is on lower maintenance costs. It is on higher payloads, better fuel efficiency and less loads on the refrigeration unit, he added. Catering to OEM clients like Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Isuzu, Mahindra & Mahindra, Volvo India, and Eicher at one end, Subzero Insulation Technologies is serving cold chain operators like Sheetal Parivahan, DHL, Dharti, Koolex at the other. The coming of new technologies like the eutectic technology or the new-age light-weight and durable fibre-glass materials from Lamilux, reefer trucks are coming to gain in terms of the cost of transportation. It is an important development when one considers a reduction in transportation cost from Rs.4.5 per kilogram to fourty-five paise per kilogram. With end-to-end cold chain integration the need of the hour, reefer trucks are also gaining in the area of accurate temperature monitoring. Offering bodies built from GRP sandwich panels, Path Insulation has been paying much attention in enabling their clients to incorporate the most accurate temperature monitoring systems in their reefer vans. It is especially important when it comes to ferrying costly and perishable goods over distances, said a company source.

Providing refrigerated superstructures that employ the latest tech to ensure lower fuel consumption and carbon footprint, Path Insulation is paying particular attention to the clients’ need for space. Ensuring that the reefer trucks it builds have excellent insulation, superior corrosion resistance and provision to maintain high level of hygiene, the company caters to the needs of clients from the pharmaceutical industry in particular. The reefer vehicles it offers could be had with the option of XPS and Wood Glue as well. The other bits include aluminium T section, SS corrugation and aluminium chequered flooring. Catering to clients like Intas, Subway, CGMSC, KMSCL, and Sankalp among others, Ice Make Refrigeration has also come to incorporate the latest and the most promising technological advances in the reefer truck bodies that it builds. It uses GRP panels with an eye on strong yet light weight construction. Offering Eutectic containers as well as dry insulated containers, the company is focusing on better space utilisation, lower TCO and superior thermal efficiency.

Tech that matters

Supporting reefer truck body builders, OMD Solutions has come to offer a temperature monitoring solution called Dhruv-Track Kool. It comprises of a robust hardware and cloud-based software architecture that enables the users to avail of temperature and other sensor data via web and mobile applications. It also provides complex alarm scenarios using advance alarm module. Violations are reported by emails and SMS. In case of power outages, the solution immediately alarms the user. Using an autonomous GPS and temperature tracker with magnetic mount, Dhruv-Track Kool, according to Narendra Pandya, Director, has strategically placed sensors across the reefer container to monitor the temperature range across the entire length and breath. “In case the door is opened, an alarm goes off in the unit that is fitted in the driver’s cabin,” averred Pandya. Aimed at exports markets like the Middle East, OMD Solutions, in India, is claiming to experience good traction for Dhruv-Track Kool. Having a battery life of one-month post a full-charge, the solution, according to Pandya, employs certified (and calibrated) sensors, which enable precision temperature value and tracking.

With demand for reefer trucks with pneumatic suspension on the rise, albeit on a smaller scale to carry critical medical equipment, technology is clearly defining the reefer truck space. It is also getting cold chain players to explore new technologies like Blockchain to ensure process integrity. Consider a Massachusetts Institute of Technology start-up Promethean Power Systems with a sister concern, Promethean Spenta Technologies based at Pune. The company has found a way to produce milk chillers that quickly drop temperature of milk to reduce bacterial growth even without electricity. Powering the chiller is a novel thermal battery that stores thermal energy when the grid’s available, and releases the energy without need of electricity. The thermal battery is not a battery in the traditional sense, and is instead a tank that contains two types of materials – a phase-changing material (PCM) that freezes and liquefies inside a series of tubes, and the exact series of tubes that are submersed in a heat-transfer fluid (HTF) that never freezes. The battery is attached to a refrigeration compressor and a stainless steel heat exchanger that rapidly chills milk that’s poured over the exchanger’s surface.
At the recent Cold Chain Show, it displayed a chiller truck based on the Mahindra Bolero and Tata 407 chassis. Having installed a chiller on Ashok Leyland Dost chassis as well, the company is aiming at SME players who often are at a loss to effectively transport milk to collection centres or to the customer. Promising 50 per cent reduction in operating cost as compared to a conventional reefer vehicle, the chillers provided by Promethean also offer the operator improved temperature control despite multiple door openings, less vehicle wear and tear since engine power is not used to chill, and lower maintenance cost since there is no compressor onboard. Equipped with real-time remote monitoring system to ensure temperature control, the ‘mobile’ chillers that the company is currently offering in the sub-one tonne vehicle category, could be used to ferry not just milk but also yoghurt, bakery products, fruits, vegetables, etc.

Made interesting by the fact that the reefer truck could be charged at the food plant or at the distribution point, the Promethean ‘mobile’ chiller solution is engineered to maintain product temperature throughout the delivery route without consuming diesel and adding to the vehicle’s emission cycle. It also reduces diesel consumption by 10 to 12-litres per day as compared to conventional reefer trucks. With companies like Amul, Hutsun, Mother Dairy, Parag, Nestle and Heritage as clients, Promethean clocked a turnover of USD-three million in 2019. Exporting its products to Tanzania, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the company is striving to be an end-to-end cold chain solutions provider. It is empowering the setting up of an efficient milk and food distribution centre in remote areas of the country, contributing to the development of cold chain
in a technologically savvy manner.