InspiraFarms Cooling gains FlowerWatch certification on its cold rooms for flowers
InspiraFarms Cooling, a designer and supplier of modular, energy-efficient, on and close-to-farm cold rooms, pre-coolers, freezers and packhouses for the floriculture, meat and horticultural sector, is now a FlowerWatch certified partner.
In December 2021, Kenya exported cut flowers worth roughly about 90 million U.S. dollars. While the export value of cut flowers has been fluctuating, peaking at approximately 129 million USD in January 2021, the industry is still a high-value economic industry. Kenya’s flower export value is projected to be well over 1 billion USD, presenting a growing need for cooling technologies to reduce flowers’ deterioration by minimising water loss, respiration rates, sensitivity to ethylene, microbial development, and ethylene production. For this reason, FlowerWatch has developed a fail-safe quality assurance system that identifies the challenges in the cold chain and designs systems to permanently fix them, by recommending the best possible quality of tools.
Both FlowerWatch and InspiraFarms Cooling share the ambition to optimise and contribute to the flower cold chain, unlock value and make post-harvest operations more sustainable than ever before. For this reason, FlowerWatch will provide InspiraFarms with a whole line of services, set quality standards, and provide training, audits, cold chain analysis, for InspiraFarms Cooling’s products, all based on global quality standards for post-harvest cooling for flowers. Through this, FlowerWatch recommends InspiraFarms Cooling as a leading provider of pre-cooling and cooling products and services for the optimal post-harvest treatment of export grade flowers.
As a FlowerWatch certified partner, InspiraFarms will commit to its cooling technologies and solutions meeting the Key Performance Indicators for FlowerWatch’s quality standards, including cooling efficiency, ethylene sensors efficiency and pre-cooling efficiency, to ensure every farm, forwarder, airline, exporter and supermarket can access high-quality cooling for flowers.
About FlowerWatch
FlowerWatch® is a Netherlands-based centre of expertise and worldwide trendsetter in monitoring and ensuring the quality, value and vase life of fresh-cut flowers and plants. Led by Dutch scientist and floriculture entrepreneur Jeroen van der Hulst, FlowerWatch is uniquely positioned to realize industry-wide change. Their role as a leading centre of expertise on flower quality assurance, combined with our extensive global network, gives them access to all stakeholders across the global flower supply chain. With the knowledge and the capacities and the credibility to connect all parties as a neutral facilitator, FlowerWatch synchronizes the overall flower quality, while working individually with each link in the chain.
About InspiraFarms Cooling
InspiraFarms is a leading provider of advanced and sustainable cooling solutions, for high-value fresh produce across Africa, serving exporters, agribusinesses, 3rd party logistics service providers and food supply chains in emerging markets. Founded in 2012, InspiraFarms Cooling has served the flower, fruit, vegetable and meat sector, with the goal of providing agribusiness in the developing world with tools, technology, data and expertise to significantly reduce food losses, energy costs, and access higher-value markets. InspiraFarms has designed its cooling solutions (cold rooms, packhouses, freezers, slaughterhouses, and pre-coolers) to minimise food loss, maximise shelf life, reduce OPEX and give access to data; all to maximise ROI at one of the earliest points post-harvests. InspiraFarms has a range of solutions for the fruit and vegetable, flower, animal protein and temperature-controlled logistics industries.
