Cold chain database to be launched in 2023

MANILA, Philippines — The Board of Investments (BOI) is set to lead the launch of a cold chain database project of various government agencies and the private sector in February 2023, as part of efforts to create an integrated supply chain solution in the country.

In a statement yesterday, the BOI said the database would  map out existing cold chain service providers, estimate and forecast supply and demand for cold chain service, and generate data on present and future cold chain service gaps focusing on agriculture and fishery products, which need to pass through the cold chain.

This in turn will offer a data-driven basis for policy formulation and investment promotion, according to the BOI.

It said  the database also provides a guide about the specific locations where investment promotions should be focused while aspiring to meet the Philippine Cold Chain Industry Roadmap’s target of increasing local cold chain capacity by 50,000 pallet positions per year in the near term.

The BOI said that InsightSCS Corp., the developer of the DeliverE platform, recently presented to an inter-agency working group the concluded cold chain database as the final output of a project named, “Development of a Cold Chain Integrated Supply Chain Solution for Evidence-based Policy Making and Investment Programming.”

“The project is remarkable and exactly how I envisioned it during the onset of discussions,” said BOI governor Marjorie Ramos-Samaniego, who lauded InsightSCS Corp. for taking the lead in the data collection and web platform development.

On the database’s mainstreaming, Ramos-Samaniego urged the utmost cooperation of industry stakeholders to continue supporting the project to have a robust database with data analytics that will lead to the creation of intelligent, business-informed decisions and relevant policies.

For his part, InsightSCS CEO  Pierre Carlo Curay emphasized  that with more information shared, more people would understand the requirements of the cold chain industry.

He also expressed his appreciation for the support in the data gathering and validation phase of the project offered by the BOI, Department of Agriculture’s National Meat Inspection Service, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and Bureau of Plant Industry, Bureau of Local Government Development under the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), and the Cold Chain Association of the Philippines, Inc.

Curay said the project was a success despite the challenging data collection.

“We were able to mitigate and pivot and figure out how we could gather more data,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mae Valdez, National Policy and Regulations coordinator of the UNIDO Project hopes that other agencies would also find the database useful, as she pointed out that the project has been significant in generating relevant data for other programs being implemented by other agencies such as the development of guidelines for the Minimum Energy Performance for Sectors (MEPS) for the cold chain industry by the Energy Utilization Management Bureau, a line bureau of the Department of Energy (DOE).

The  guidelines support the implementation of Republic Act  11285 or the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act.

In addition, the EMB is coordinating with InsightSCS Corp. regarding the generated data on refrigerants relative to the country’s commitment under the Kigali Agreement on the phasing down of hydrofluorocarbons as refrigerants.

“With the database’s completion, specifically on generating viable investment locations based on supply-demand gap analytics, the BOI can now fine-tune its investment prospectus for the cold chain industry,” said BOI Agr-based industry division acting chief Francis Peñaflor.