Who we are
Founded in 2012 with the goal of providing African agribusiness with the tools, technology and expertise to significantly reduce food losses and energy costs, and access higher-value markets.
InspiraFarms Cooling has deployed over 120 units across 15 countries. With 25 full-time employees spread across Kenya, Italy, UK Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
InspiraFarms Cooling is continuously innovating and building technical and financial features for its products, deploying physical infrastructure, with more services and features that maximise the efficiency, sustainability, affordability, and returns on investment for its customers.
Since 2022 InspiraFarms Cooling technology is now available to retrofit any cold chain asset with many servicing options.
With the support of InspiraFarms and its partners, our clients have improved the livelihoods of over 5,000 rural community members across the developing world, including new jobs filled by women in underserved communities.
Strategic partnerships & certifications
GLOBALG.A.P.
InspiraFarms Cooling is an official GLOBALG.A.P. Community Member. Community members support the work of the GLOBALG.A.P. Secretariat to promote good farming practices throughout the world via a set of standards for safe and responsible farming. Community members help to shape these standards through active involvement in their creation and revision. There are three types of GLOBALG.A.P. Community Membership: Producer/Supplier, retailer/food service, and associate members. InspiraFarms is an associate member.
FlowerWatch
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. FlowerWatch provide InspiraFarms Cooling with a whole line of services, set quality standards, and provide training, audits, cold chain analysis, for its 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.
B-Corporation
Certified B Corporations, or B Corps, are companies verified by B Lab to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. B Lab recognizes that high-quality social and environmental business standards demand continuous improvement in order to meet principles of inclusion, independence, and credibility. Through the B Corp Certification, InspiraFarms Cooling demonstrates high social and environmental performance, demonstrate high social and environmental performance. Finally, InspiraFarms Cooling exhibits transparency by allowing information about its performance measured against B Lab’s standards to be publicly available on its B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.
Ifria
Ifria is an Integrated Cold Chain Company in North and West African markets. Ifria’s mission is to develop new, modern, and efficient perishable product storage capacities that can more efficiently serve the growing and rapidly changing needs of the Panafrican markets. Ifria offers integrated cold chain solutions to different clients through two categories of services: cold chain services for businesses & cold chain services for farmers. InspiraFarms & Ifria has partnered in different projects for developing cold chain services in different African markets.
Freezelink
InspiraFarms Cooling and FreezeLink have partnered to build and integrate the fresh produce cold chain in Ghana, focusing on export crop supply chains, through the development of business opportunities and facilitating access to cold chain technology through asset finance, refrigeration-as-a-service, and technical services. The partnership combines FreezeLink’s cold chain logistics and technical expertise to increase commercial opportunities in the Ghana fresh produce industry, both as an operator and a supplier of technical after-sales services and cooling solutions.
Funders & Investors
Energy Access Ventures Fund
EAV I is a €75 million fund – focused on the energy infrastructure problem. Through this, they back early-stage companies providing low-carbon and affordable solutions, including for power, internet, and cooling, to businesses and individuals across Africa. Their mission is to invest in companies that overcome this problem by scaling decentralized and digitized infrastructure across the continent. EAV is an investor in InspiraFarms Cooling since 2018.
FactorE Ventures
FactorE is dedicated to supporting the people and ideas that turn challenges in energy, agriculture, mobility, and waste into de-carbonized solutions for emerging and frontier markets. FactorE serves as a conduit between philanthropic and commercial investors who are like-minded in their pursuit of sustainable development through market-driven forces. FactorE funded InspiraFarms Cooling in 2017.
Pymwymic
Pymwymic is a co-owned impact investment cooperative investing in impact-driven companies. It is a group of over 100 individuals, families, and entrepreneurs with different backgrounds, ages, and nationalities, joined by a common purpose. Pymwymic is an investor in InspiraFarms Cooling since 2018.
SunFunder
SunFunder has the mission to pioneer and scale climate investments in emerging markets, with a current focus on the clean energy transition in Africa and Asia. With 40 person team, based in Nairobi, London, Paris, and most recently Singapore, has built the most extensive track record of distributed solar investments in Africa – financing 60 solar companies and projects over the last decade. SunFunder has invested in InspiraFarms since 2019.
Shell Foundation
Shell Foundation (SF) is a charity registered in England and Wales, founded by Shell in 2000, that creates and scales business solutions that empower underserved populations to earn a living income through access to clean energy products and services. Shell Foundation has funded several projects developed by InspiraFarms Cooling since 2014.
Kawisafi Ventures
KawiSafi Ventures has the mission to unlock the potential of renewable off-grid energy as a faster, cheaper, and cleaner way to bring power to Africa’s energy-poor communities than extending the grid. KawiSafi invests in companies that are developing decarbonized, distributed energy infrastructure, that can provide critical essential services and enhanced productivity to underserved populations across Africa. KawiSafi Ventures has invested in InspiraFarms Cooling since 2020.
Doen Foundation
DOEN is striving for a world based on a circular economy, in which everyone counts, that puts the commons first, and there is room for radical imagination. It focuses on supporting pioneers entrepreneurs working toward three overarching, interconnected themes: regenerative economy, social solidarity, and, power of imagination. Doen funded InspiraFarms in 2014.
The Montpelier Foundation
The Montpelier and Hampshire Foundations fund partners who are finding pathways to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or to help people build resilience against poverty and climate change. The Montpelier Foundation funded InspiraFarms Cooling in 2014.
UKaid
In partnership with Shell Foundation, UKaid’s Transforming Energy Access program supported InspiraFarms Cooling to receive strategic support and funding for its data services, and to support the reduction of production costs and research into key value propositions, helping the company to scale up its commercial operations in Kenya and pilot demonstration units in India. Additional support through the Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities project (a partnership between UK aid and the IKEA Foundation) has enabled the company to now test the business feasibility of pay-as-you-use cold chains with thirty farmers in Kenya.
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