Solar Powered Cold Chain preservation & storage of perishable fruits & vegetables for market women

Netune Atlantic Limited is focused on providing sustainable solution on the preservation of perishable fruits and vegetables for market women and small farm-holders  in the markets and our local communities e.g Tomatoes, pepper, and other vegetables by so doing eliminating market loss and also fostering market growth and the preservation of the nutritional value of the perishables, hence the emergence of our solar powered cold chain and also our storage facilities built for the storage and preservation purposes.

Our services help in loss reduction/elimination of losses due to lack of electricity and standard preservation facilities in our local markets. Our intervention helps maintain the nutritional value of foods and ensure market women do not sell at a loss given diminishing/deteriorating value of their wares as a lack of electricity, adequate preservation and storage facilities. 

Our Solar cold chain is formulated specially to meet the needs of rural farmers and market women in Nigeria, offering sustainable solution to the challenges faced by those who sell perishable goods. Our solar cold chain is powered by renewable energy, which powers the cold chain storage facility to preserve fruits and vegetables. It practically extends their shelf-life.

Furthermore, orientation is giving to local farmers and market women on the importance and benefit of preserving their perishables in the cold chain, especially those that sell in bulk. The cold chain has the ability of

Our target populace are farmers in rural areas and petty market women who lack access to adequate power supply in Nigeria.

preserving a large quantity of goods; maintain the quality of the perishable and also the nutritional value.

Our target populace are farmers in rural areas and petty market women who lack access to adequate power supply in Nigeria.

Netune Atlantic works with the local farming community and market women alike to ensure this solution serves them well, we are currently embedded within the local market, and we’ve been serving them for two years. We have our staff in the marketing working together with the market women and helping them store their perishables in our facility. The facility is not enough to serve all of them, given the high demand, we intend add another cold chain facility if we are successful with this application. From the video attached, we do carry our regular interaction with the women in order to ensure we meet their needs. It’s a social enterprise for us, as we charge very little to maintain the facility at the market.

We are therefore well positioned to serve the market women.

We chose to call it the pilot stage because it’s our first intervention in this market space and we wanted to taste the solution and its effectiveness. Our solar cold chain was installed in a local market in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital and this has yielded massive results, more-than 120 market women and men have put their perishables in our solar powered cold chain and the result is it has maintained the quality of their produce. In addition, we are trying to bring out strategies that will enable us spread more, reaching other rural areas and markets where we can mount our chain and solve their shelf-life problems.

We want to empower our market women and small farm-holders to live above poverty line by ensuring they have facilities that help preserve their produces and market wares to ensure they achieve more sales and in turn make more profit. We are also using our facility to align with the UN SDG goals and ensure positive climate action and sustainable energy solution.

It helps positively address climate challenges in the agri foods and renewable energy sectors improves on sustainable energy solutions, adds real value to those who use it, and helps improve people’s lives and addresses poverty through improved incomes for market women.

We’ve trialled our solution and here is what we found out: Our solution, Solar cold chain will have an important impact as follows:

·       It has eliminated the need for generator and fossil fuel, therefore it has demonstrated significant impact on cost savings for the women and eliminated noise pollution

·       Market women do not inhale fumes that comes from generated exhaust anymore, this has positive impact on their health and on the environment.

·       It has addressed the challenge of lack of adequate power supply from the grid as we rely on renewable energy “sunlight” to power our facility.

·       It improves the commercial subsistence and livelihoods of the smallholder farmers, market women and traders.

·       Importantly, it ensures that consumers of the FFVs are continuously purchasing and consuming nutritious and fresh food products all year-round with maximal benefits on their health and wellbeing.

The implementation of these solar-powered solutions has yielded numerous benefits for the vulnerable communities we serve, also ensuring we achieve SDGs 1, 3, 7, & and 13 Goals for poverty reduction/elimination, good health, sanitation, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Communities and Climate Action. Our core goal is the eliminate food loss due to lack of adequate preservation facilities. 

Some of the indicators of our progress  are :

. feedbacks from our customers

. the quality of the products put in the cold chain after a period of time

It’s 100% Powered by Solar Energy with remote monitoring sensors technology to optimise the system.

Eleven (11) people

Since 2021, Three (3) years. 

We have a diverse inclusive environment, 6 out 11 staff are women, 

and two of the women hold management positions. We have staff from different ethnicities in Nigeria working for the same goals. We have fostered a healthy work environment which gives every staff a sense of belonging. We all feel connected and as a result, productivity is great given the achievement we’ve recorded. We also ensure all employees are valued, respected, treated fairly and their contributions are recognized.

Business – To – Consumer Models (B2C) We deal with Small Farm Holders and Market Women selling Fruits and Vegetables by offering them our fresh food preservation technology on a Pay-as-you-Use (PAYU) business model basis. This also ensures that we are able to provide Cooling-as-a-Service (CAAS) to the local communities as well.

Funding: Self-Funding.

We are working to create more similar solutions in other market locations in Nigeria and charge market reflect prices for our services.

We are currently working to scale up the model in the country and this is currently ongoing.