For the first time, Maersk offers end-to-end cold chain logistics solution for grapes’ exporters from Nashik and Sangli thus improving the overall turnaround time into North Europe by 4 days. Gearing up for the peak grape season, Maersk enables booking management, offers on-land and ocean transportation, cargo tracking, customs clearance amongst other services as a part of the end-to-end solution.

Mumbai, 25 February 2020: Maersk, a leading global integrated container logistics company, has recently started end-to-end cold chain logistics solution for its customers exporting grapes from Nashik and Sangli to North Europe. With this new offering, Maersk is enabling the exporters from the region to supply high quality Indian grapes to global market and helping fetch higher returns for the farmer community in and around the Nashik district. Leveraging its variety of services throughout the supply chain, Maersk is improving the overall turnaround time to North Europe by 4 days.

Gearing up for the peak grape season and helping exporters based in Nashik, ‘The Grape Capital of India’, Maersk’s cold chain offerings go all the way from the packhouse of the exporters to the destination in North Europe. Maersk is thus being the one-stop-shop for its customers by offering booking management, transportation including land-based and ocean logistics and customs clearance. The movement of grapes is being done in refrigerated containers (Reefers) with Remote Container Management solution ‘Captain Peter’ that monitors atmospheric conditions inside the container and provides visibility of the same to the customers. Maersk is also deploying a Reefer technician to overlook contingencies throughout the journey.

Steve Felder, Managing Director, Maersk South Asia, said “Nashik is a priority market for the exports of grapes from India. With our end-to-end cold chain solutions, we aim to enable the exporters to take their grapes from Nashik to North Europe with a fast turn-around time, and with more simplicity. By providing a one-stop-shop solution, we are enabling the farmers to focus on what they do best, leave the logistics to us and not get bothered by any challenges that they might face in the journey of their produce from their farms to their customers.”

He added, “Besides grapes, the region also yields other quality agro-produce like onions, tomato, chilli, baby corn, okra and other vegetables, which has immense trade potential in the global markets. With our cold chain logistics solutions, we aim to further open-up and liberalise the agro-economy of the country enabling farmers and entrepreneurs to be a part of the international trade ecosystem.”

By providing end-to-end solutions, Maersk allows the exporters to initiate bookings in the easiest manner possible – even through WhatsApp and Emails. From there on, the teams at Maersk take over and ensure that every step in the long journey is taken care of. Ultimately, by consolidating the entire journey, Maersk is not only able to cut down on the total time required for taking the cargo of grapes from Nashik to North Europe but also add reliability in preserving quality of the produce. With the elimination of intermediaries, the effective cost of logistics is brought down making it a win-win situation for Maersk, the exporters and their customers.

Mr. Mayank Tandon, Vice-President of FreshTrop, applauded Maersk’s cold chain solution saying, “We are extremely excited about the value proposition of Maersk’s cold chain solution. As a unique proposition in the industry, it has the potential to add great value by the virtue of visibility it offers us on our cargo. We are looking forward to serving our customers better with the tools that Maersk has placed in our hands through a single window solution for our logistic needs.”

Mr. Ranjeet Patil, Director Fresh Express, a customer using Maersk’s end-to-end solution for exporting grapes out of Nashik, commented “The cold chain solution for grape shipments from India is an excellent initiative by Maersk. The efforts being made by the Maersk team to visit shippers, train teams on the shippers’ side will help smoothen the entire process including booking of the container, inland transport and documentation. This will bring in considerable ease and speed while ensuring complete visibility of cargo temperature and container location. Remote Container Management along with TradeLens will greatly help our customers as well.”

Maersk aims at expanding its end to end cold chain solutions across the country to tap in all the seasonal exports to eventually enable trade for the agro-based industry from India.

Source: Maersk