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Americas: Team wins competition for cold boxes for rental

A team of MIT and Harvard University students won the first-ever MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize for smart, modular, refrigerated shipping boxes that can be rented out individually.

This innovation earned the team called GoMango the first-place prize of US$12,000 at the competition, which was organized by the student-run MIT Food and Agriculture Club to support early-stage ventures focusing on food and agriculture sustainability.

It beat five teams to clinch the prize.

Competition co-sponsors were MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab and Rabobank.

Rentable cold chain

In GoMango’s pitch, team member and MIT alumnus Naren Tallapragada ’13, now a PhD student at Harvard University, said refrigerated trucks are rare in India, because they are too expensive for producers and wholesalers to rent or own.

By some estimates, there are as many refrigerated trucks in Boston as there are in the whole country of India.

With shipping routes sometimes spanning hundreds of miles in very hot temperatures, nearly 40% of India’s fruit and vegetables spoil before reaching customers.

To address the issue, GoMango invented refrigerated boxes that can be collapsed, and stored in partnering cold-storage warehouses.

Food producers and wholesalers can rent exactly as many boxes as needed and stack them on traditional dry trucks, which cost roughly US$100 less than refrigerated trucks.

Boxes are stuffed with packs filled with phase-change materials, much like giant ice packs. They are kept frozen until packed with food — such as fruits and vegetables and meats and fish — and liquefy throughout a trip to keep contents cool for up to three days.

Each box also connects to the Internet to track location, temperature, humidity, and payment information.

“We think that we can have a great social impact by getting more food to market, affordably and in an environmentally friendly way, thereby doing our part to keep the developing world healthier, wealthier, and a cleaner place,” Tallapragada said.

GoMango’s prize money will go toward developing commercial prototypes to pilot in India in the coming months.

Story by Rob Matheson, MIT

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