Passive cold chain solution (‘IKIC milk orbs’) for milk preservation and transportation: Pilot testing results

In Ethiopia, dairy cooperatives, and small holder farmers commonly market mostly morning milk to processors/collectors without cooling at farm gate.Evening milk, which accounts for about45% of the daily milk yield is not marketed as most processors are not collecting it.No cooling facility is available to smallholder farmers to preserve the evening milk and supply to processors via the dairy cooperatives in the following morning therefore it doesn’t enter the formal milk market channel.The passive cold chain solutions (IKIC MilkOrbs) provides a suitable technology for small holder farmers to keep evening milk under 4oC overnight and enables them to supply to processors the following morning.The technology has the potential to scale at milk collection point level and significantly increase the volume of quality milk entering the formal market.This means that the technology directly benefits smallholder milk producing farmers, dairy cooperatives, processors,and consumers at a larger scale contributing to sector transformation.