Open Call for Your VCCA’s Incubator Programme

Context

Every year, 56% of vegetables and 61% of fruits are wasted after harvest globally, from the initial harvesting, grading, packaging, and transportation from field to storage and distribution to the consumers. A large portion of the losses in the post-harvest phase of the fresh produce value chain are caused by poor infrastructure and logistics, lack of proper cooling technology, insufficient skills, knowledge and management capacity of supply chain actors, and inadequate market linkage.

The Your VCCA Incubator programme will work with five fast-growing cooling companies journeying to make decentralised, clean cold rooms affordable and accessible to smallholder farmers in developing countries. However, technology alone cannot solve all the problems of food loss in post-harvest stages. Concerted effort is required to involve the farming communities in running the rooms, leveraging traditional knowledge, and bridging capacity on post-harvest management best practices. Our partner companies bring together sustainable technologies and localised training to curb food loss, enhance farmer livelihoods, and protect resources and the environment by reducing the demand for intensive food production in the first place.

Who is this for?

The incubator is open for applications from technology providers offering highly efficient solar-powered cold storage solutions in the agricultural sector, using low-global-warming potential or natural refrigerants and thermal storage. To be eligible, the technology should focus on helping smallholders to access agricultural cold chains, thereby reducing post-harvest loss and improving livelihoods. The call for application welcomes global, regional and local companies wishing to integrate servitisation (pay-per-use model) into their business lines ,made easily implementable by the Your VCCA project through digitalisation and the use of data-science.

Why submit an idea?

The 5 selected companies will receive free technical assistance from BASE and Empa to integrate their technological solution with the servitisation business model and to digitalise the operations with the open-source and data-driven mobile application, Coldtivate, that we have created. Selected companies will receive support to test and deploy the solution, and also benefit from international exposure through case studies and public relation activities. Furthermore, incubator participants will have access to our global network.

How will the Incubator support your company?

1. Enabling context-specific implementation of servitisation

• Help to understand the servitisation business model and define a tailored strategy and structure to best implement it in your case.
• Facilitate the development of the right ecosystem and partnerships for the successful implementation of the model.
• Help to define a pricing strategy for your cooling as a service, using previously tried and tested methodology.

2. Helping leverage data-science and digitalisation for cold room operations

• Establish remote monitoring of the cooling facility and provide cold room operators and farmers with market intelligence to facilitate decision-making.
• Teach how to set up temperature sensors and connect them with the Coldtivate app.
• Provide predictions to the cold room users on the remaining shelf-life of the produce based on real-time sensor data.

3. Training on using Coldtivate

• Train companies and operators to digitalise the most critical processes, such as digitalising inventory management and the remote monitoring of the cold room, to facilitate the implementation of servitisation.
• Provide dashboards on cold room utilisation and revenue generated that help monitor strategically relevant indicators.

4. Communications and visibility

• Provide material to communicate the value and importance of appropriate post-harvest handling and cooling to the users.
• Support the development of case studies.
• Provide platforms and opportunities to share success stories.
• Opportunities to network and exchange best practices with other companies in the cold chain landscape.

Applications are now closed. Meet the winners here.