Comments on: The Case For Investing In The Good Food Supply Chain https://foodtechconnect.com/2016/04/04/investing-in-good-food-supply-chain/ News, trends & community for food and food tech startups. Mon, 07 Jan 2019 02:54:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 By: Bruce Rubin https://foodtechconnect.com/2016/04/04/investing-in-good-food-supply-chain/#comment-4497 Fri, 08 Apr 2016 14:28:00 +0000 http://foodtechconnect.com/?p=26386#comment-4497 How does a company ready to launch needing funding to erect its demonstration unit?
The product design has been tested and is ready to go.

In today’s world of growing populations and food needs, we are revisiting, with respect to agriculture, the old adage “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” However, too often in the developing world, we are letting the newly-educated man down by not providing him with infrastructure needed to save, sell, or transport what he grows.

India, Africa, Latin America and other developing regions continue to face crippling hunger and poverty rates. Despite the consistent production of agricultural products, the post-harvest loss rate for fruits and vegetables hovers around 40% and has remained there for years, undermining the ability of local farmers to feed their countrymen and develop exports. The total spoilage of post-harvest loss hovers around 1.3 billion tons.

Some important facts and figures:

 In India only 2% of products are temperature controlled

 Post-harvest losses cost China at least $6 billion per year and Pakistan $1 billion

 In Panama post-harvest losses approach 60 %

 In Sub-Saharan Africa, post-harvest losses of horticultural crops range from 30 percent to an astonishing 80 percent.

To address this world-wide problem of spoilage and to improve the potential for developing countries to feed their populations, Nenko Advisors International, LLC has developed a concept unique in concept and implementation: RASP®.

What is RASP®?

RASP® is an off-the-grid, alternative energy, agricultural cold storage facility aimed at preventing post-harvest loss of fruits and vegetables worldwide. With RASP®, we combine the latest in cold storage manufacturing technology and control with specially designed PV solar power as the energy source. Using electronically integrated systems, combined with proprietary control units, RASP® produces a cold storage product potentially capable of dramatically reducing the loss of fruits and vegetables in the developing economies of the world.

The RASP® cold room can be located at any point in the supply chain, from the farm, to the village, to the export center. The current service life of this power system is projected to be 25 years.

The RASP® cold room is planned to be 24 ft x 10 ft x 8 ft. but can be made larger to meet the needs of each geographical area and can become part of a complete hub and spoke distribution and storage system.

The entire system, which includes the solar power arrays, battery storage banks, control units and cold room, can be easily assembled in a matter of days by a small team of semi-skilled workers managed by our trained installation managers.

The amount of crops that can be stored in each RASP® unit is estimated at a minimum of 10 metric tons, with scalability to larger capacities possible and anticipated.

Why RASP®?

RASP® supplies the missing link in the cold chain with ease of deployment, cost effectiveness, ease of operation, low maintenance, scalability and the ability to be remotely controlled and monitored.

It also has the potential to allow farmers globally to maximize their crop production by utilizing all of the land that they have available to plant. RASP® will allow farmers to harvest crops when they are at the right time to be harvested and thereby maximizing the potential for income. In many cases our research shows that crops are picked when the “middle man” is coming not when the farmer should be harvesting.

When fully deployed, RASP® should dramatically increase the amount of cold storage available worldwide, thus playing a key role in solving the puzzle of reducing world-wide crop spoilage.

RASP® has advantages over the competition which are reconditioned shipping containers. RASP® is adaptable to size, does not need paved roads to bring it to the location, can be monitored from a central location to insure reliability, and per cubic foot is less costly.

What Next for RASP®?

The developers of RASP® are seeking $250,000 to erect its demonstration unit in the US. This number pales in comparison to the following statistics found on http://www.stopthehunger.com .

There are over 800 million people in the world who are undernourished. Over $4.5 Million is spent on daily subsistence food aid, which represents over $2.02 Billion per year. The $2.02 Billion would pay for approximately 10000 RASP® units, which in turn could feed many more people by using local products rather than imported crops.

RASP® Management Team

Jerry “Wolfie” Wolf, Co-founder

Jerry has more than three decades of commercial experience including tenure with international accounting firms and ownership and management of a multidivisional commercial real estate services company. He was also a pioneer in the field of e-commerce. His background includes an outstanding record of professional achievement in positions that have provided a broad range of administrative, supervisory, marketing, sales, public relations and customer service skills. He has demonstrated the ability to:

• Build profitable businesses, from inception to thriving operations

• Perceive trends, adapt to change, implement new concepts

• Make sound decisions and manage multiple tasks

• Arrange financing to enable companies to achieve their growth objectives

• Attract top talent from multiple sources to build implementation teams that

deliver against company objectives

Bruce H. Rubin, CPIM, MBA, Co-founder

Bruce has over thirty years experience in industry for medium sized consumer products companies. Bruce’s experience and background provides him with the ability to analyze problems quickly and come up with solutions. The word NO is not part of his vocabulary when it comes to solving a problem. He brings a “can do” approach to all issues and provides solutions that work and are typically easy to implement. Bruce’s focus has been in the areas of:

• Global Sourcing

• International and Domestic Partnerships

• Supply Chain Management

• Product Development

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