Ecotutu, Lange & Grant partner to tackle post-harvest losses

Efforts to reduce post-harvest losses and improve access to cold storage gained momentum on Thursday as Ecotutu and Lange & Grant Commodities unveiled a cold-room showroom in Surulere, Lagos, showcasing technologies and building materials for food preservation.

The partnership is expected to support the deployment of cold storage facilities by combining Ecotutu’s cooling solutions with Lange & Grant’s insulated construction systems, while offering farmers, traders and food businesses different ways to access the facilities without necessarily bearing the full cost upfront.

Speaking at the launch, Ecotutu’s Chief Executive Officer, Babajide Oluwase, said the company’s cooling systems were designed to meet the storage needs of different categories of perishable products, taking into account local operating conditions and energy requirements.

He said the systems combine refrigeration technology with solar power for more energy-efficient cooling, adding that the refrigeration units are designed to regulate their operation automatically in response to temperature changes.

According to him, the systems enter standby once the required temperature is reached and resume operation when the temperature rises above a set level. He explained that the settings depend on the type of product being stored.

Oluwase said the company’s solutions include cold rooms, chillers and blast-cooling systems for products such as tomatoes, peppers, fish, meat and chicken, while specialised cooling applications could also serve temperature-sensitive products.

He added that some installations let operators monitor temperature, humidity, and energy consumption remotely via a phone or computer. At facilities with inventory monitoring, operators can also track products in storage.

Oluwase said the aim was to make cooling more accessible across the food value chain, from farm clusters and aggregation points to markets and consumers.

Chief Executive Officer of Lange & Grant, Tunde Okoya, said the company’s contribution to the partnership centred on manufacturing structurally insulated panels used in constructing cold rooms and food-processing facilities.

He explained that refrigeration systems require specialised installation, maintenance, and ongoing customer engagement, so the companies needed to focus on their respective areas of competence.

Rather than manufacture refrigeration equipment itself, Okoya said Lange & Grant would work with partners such as Ecotutu to combine its construction materials with cooling technology and provide solutions for businesses.

He said both companies shared an interest in developing practical innovations for the Nigerian economy, particularly in addressing losses associated with the handling, storage and distribution of food.

On energy efficiency, Okoya said businesses needed systems that could deliver the required performance while using less energy, which would help reduce operating costs.

He said the companies’ long-term ambition extended beyond cold rooms to food-processing facilities at farm and community levels.

He explained that such facilities could include mini-abattoirs, community poultry centres, and dairy-processing centres, enabling farmers to process their produce closer to where it was produced.

Using dairy processing as an example, Okoya said local facilities could help farmers turn milk into products such as wara, a local cheese, instead of relying only on selling raw produce.

He said improving community-level processing capacity could create more opportunities for farmers to add value to their products and strengthen the food supply chain.

Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Ecotutu, Michael Akinsete, said the company was exploring different financing and payment arrangements to make cold storage more accessible to small businesses, farmers and market traders.

He listed outright purchase, asset financing, lease-to-own arrangements, and cooling-as-a-service among the available models, under which customers could pay for storage services rather than buy an entire facility.

Akinsete said users at some farm-gate and open-market locations could pay between N250 and N300 per crate daily, depending on the applicable arrangement.

He said the company has been developing its solutions since 2022 and operates in 10 states, with plans to expand its reach. Its Lagos facilities include locations in Mile 12, Ajah, and Ogudu.

According to him, making cold storage closer to farmers and traders would give them more time to sell their produce and reduce pressure to dispose of perishable goods quickly because of spoilage risk.

Akinsete said the company was also exploring financing support through the Rural Electrification Agency’s Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) programme, which he said could help reduce the cost of deploying cooling solutions for eligible businesses and groups.

He said the company’s preferred approach was to make the technology accessible to a wider range of users, including farmer and market associations that might otherwise struggle to finance cold storage infrastructure.

The showroom features insulated sandwich panels for cold rooms and prefabricated buildings, roofing panels, expanded polystyrene (EPS) fibre cement products, and light-gauge steel systems.

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