The Indian wing of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), a Germany-based development agency, has floated a tender for ten solar-powered cold storage units for its projects in Karnataka and Maharashtra to reduce COVID-19 related agricultural losses.

The last date for the submission of bids is November 19, 2020. This tender is part of GIZ’s Green Innovation Centers (GIC) for the Agriculture and Food Sector project. The scope of work includes transporting, installing, and commissioning the systems on the site. After they are installed, each unit must be tested and commissioned in the presence of farmers, a local partner of the GIC, and the GIC project team.

Successful bidders must also organize training programs for the beneficiaries on operating and maintaining the units. They must also provide scheduled and corrective maintenance services for three years from the date each unit is commissioned.

The units must be certified in the name of the bidder from a test laboratory accredited by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL), or the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

To be eligible to participate in the competitive bidding process, applicants must have had an average annual turnover of at least €300,000 (~$356,175) in the last three financial years and at least eight employees as of the last date of the previous year. They must also have prior experience selling or purchasing orders worth at least €100,000 (~$118,725).

GIZ said it requires the systems to be provided by technically and financially sound manufacturers in Hassan and Chikkamagalur, Karnataka, and Pune and Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, to help reduce the loss during the pre-production and post-production phase of potato.

“In this hour of a global outbreak, the wastage of food can prove to be another disaster we cannot afford. The COVID-19 outbreak has spread in India at a time when the crops are ready to be harvested. Due to restrictions on non-essential travel and movement, a shortage of farmworkers led to delay in the harvesting of crops, which will hamper our food production,” GIZ India said in its tender documents.

“The farmers and farm laborers are at the receiving end of this undesirable situation, and the food is getting lost due to issues in the supply chain. The wastage and loss of food could be minimized with a better prevalence of cold chain market and infrastructure in the country,” it added.

In June, GIZ appointed research group DNV GL to conduct a study in India’s southern region. According to DNV GL, it is the first control reserve study to quantify the requirements to balance the energy supply from wind and solar and the energy demand.

In April, GIZ and the German research institute, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems signed an agreement with other partners from the private and public sectors to implement a new project of combining aquaculture farming with solar photovoltaics in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.