Aug 8, 2020
It’s the matter of 26 tons of Ice cream from Naturals. An Ice cream so favourite of Mumbaikars that in other days it would have been a leap to ingest all of the Ice cream. The main culprit was the lockdown which led the trail of ice cream into incinerating furnace. The giant feast took place in the heart of Mumbai where one of India’s top ice cream makers had given away 26 tons of their best product for free but not to the humans who crave for ice creams but to the living bacteria who transformed the 26 tons of ice creams into flames……..
Naturals Ice cream packed twenty-six tons of ice cream in over 45,000 small containers, had been lying in cold storage for 35 days at the Naturals’ Factory in Mumbai. The government of Maharashtra made an announcement on 19th March for total lockdown in the state from next day onwards. This declaration caught Girish Pai and Hemant Naik, the top executives of Naturals Ice Cream completely off guard leaving them in state of astound.
With the onset of Covid-19 in the country, the demand for ice cream has been seen a downfall. Officials had controlled the production process at the factory accordingly to avoid wastage, but the abrupt announcement left the company lamenting as what to do with the ice cream that had already been manufactured.
“We don’t have a policy of rework if the stock expires. Being a dairy product we can’t do anything about it. We had to throw away the ice cream. That was the only option. These were packaged ice creams. Nobody knew we were going into a lockdown. Moreover, we never expected Maharashtra to announce the lockdown before the centre. It was too sudden,” says Hemant Naik, Vice President Supply Chain & Strategy, Naturals Ice Creams.
Naturals and other fresh fruit ice cream makers like Baskin Robins have a shelf life of just 15 days than regular long-life ice creams which are of 90-180 days. Maharashtra government’s lockdown declaration had preceded PM Modi’s address to the nation few days later in which he announced a two-week country-wide lockdown.
Initially the Naturals’ first decision by the management was to check if they could give away the ice creams to the poor before they expired. They reached out to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the local police. But, the first phase of lockdown saw strict implementation and there was ambiguity over the movement of vehicles.
“Only essentials were allowed, other goods were not permitted. We reached out to BMC, we reached out to police. Everyone said till the time the next input comes we are not in a position to do anything. But by the next input was issued, our products would have expired,” says Girish Pai, Director, Naturals Ice Creams.
The days passed by making Hemant and Girish restless. They started talks to dispose of the ice cream by throwing it in the gutter or asking the BMC to take it away were some of the options discussed but the quantity was too huge.
“It was not like 10 kgs of sample we’d dispose of through wet waste managers of municipality. If 26 ton of ice cream goes in a normal drain, the ice cream which has so much of protein, so much lactose and fat, it will choke the gutter. Then there’s the packaging, of course, which is a reusable resource. We did not want to put it in a landfill. We wanted to work with someone who could do justice to both these items,” says Naik.
Finally, Naik and Pai decided to approach Sanjeevani S3, which is one of the rare wet disposal plants in Mumbai.
Located in the Malad (West), Sanjeevani S3 sees 2,000 kgs of wet waste disposal every day. The co-founder of the plant, Zulkif Shaikh is an M.Tech (Green Technology) from Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. He started the plant with a couple of partners at his father’s 5,200 sqft area in 2015.
There is a palpable excitement in Zulkif’s voice, stemming from his love for science, as he started to explain a complex process of disposing ice cream which actually sounded empathetic to demean the product so loved. But dispose it must be, which involves transforming it into biogas with the help of bacteria. Fundamentally, bacterias or microbes will consume the ice cream and release biogas, which will later be burnt away.
But, the process was not all that simple and time consuming.
“I told Naturals to first send me small quantities of ice cream, so I could study how the microbes would react and the amount of biogas it would produce. It typically takes about 24 hours for the waste to be converted into gas where a small percentage of the waste also gets converted into compost,” Zulkif informed.
“A combination of bacteria in our digester converts the ice cream into gas. Liquid content is high (typically 60-65%) in wet waste and if the waste has fruits, it can go up to 90-95%. The end products of the disposal process are biogas and compost. Compost typically constitutes 10% of the end product. But since there’s nothing solid in ice creams, very little compost gets produced. Most of the ice cream gets converted into gas,” he said.
But before the bacterias start their magical activity, factory workers at Sanjeevani S3 had their part of task to perform. They had to finish unpacking the ice creams from the containers and tubs and pour it into a feeder – in the first of the three-step process. Typically, they would first put it in a pulverizer so that the waste can be reduced and shrunk to size for the microbes to feed on them at convenient more so to say in scientific term, the process is called ‘hydrolysis’, which means breakdown of a compound due to reaction with water. But since ice cream would simply melt by itself, this step was not necessary.
So, the workers put the half-melted ice cream straight into the feeder, which is an open container connected to what’s called a feeding pump. An equal amount of water is added to the mix to dilute the ice-cream and control its acidity, a decisive factor which will later decide bacteria’s reaction.
“We put ice cream and water in 50:50 ratio because ice cream is semi-solid. The microbes are fed in three intervals. Sugar directly converts into acid. If we don’t dilute the acid, and feed in intervals, the microbes can get a shock,” explained Zulkif.
By shock, Zulkif meant if the acidity is not supervised, the high acid ratio can kill the microbes. And, it’s a very expensive, plus time consuming, to replace them. “They are living beings in the end. They have their own way of growing. We just need to keep them happy by maintaining the temperature, not giving them shock,” Zulkif said.
The feeding pump shoved the ice cream from the feeder to the digester, which is the ultimate cooking pot — the space where bacterias reside and feed on the wet waste before releasing them as biogas. Inside the digester, which is a closed tank, is the broth which has the bacteria.
“The bacteria is in the digester. It’s like a broth with all the microbes. Inside the digester, the temperature is 37-40 degrees. We have a heating coil around the digester to maintain the temperature. Different types of bacteria inside the digester need different levels of temperature during the conversion process. We maintain it accordingly,” added Zulkif.
Scientifically speaking, the two key types of bacteria living in the digester are acidogens and methanogens. They work in cycles to transform the wet waste first into acid, and then into methane gas through the process of methanogenesis. Acidogens first convert the waste into acid, after which methanogens consumes that acid and converts it into methane. But, interestingly, there’s a power battle going on between acidogens and methanogens — they are hostile neighbours. Acidogens are 25 times more powerful than methanogens.
“The nature of bacteria is such that if one strain of bacteria gets to dominate the other, it’ll eat up the other bacteria. Just like big fish eat small fish — it’s the same with bacterias,” explained Zulkif.
To ensure that acidogens don’t overpower methanogens, Zulkif’s team maintains the temperature which suits the weaker methanogens.
Things get even more interesting here because the bacteria’s effectiveness in breaking down the waste depends on the acidity of the waste. In the case of ice cream, the microbes just devour it, stated Zulkif.
“The gas constant, or the amount of gas produced, is around 100-110m3 per ton for normal wet waste, but with ice cream we get 220-250m3 per ton. It’s a very good substrate for biogas plant,” he explained.
The reason the gas output is double is that much like humans, bacterias also relish sugar. “They are very happy consuming sugar. That’s why you see a huge change in the amount of gas they produce when they are fed ice cream,” added Zulkif.
Further Zulkif went on to explain that the process comes with its own set of challenges. Since ice cream also has fat in it, it takes time for bacteria to recover after consumption. This was one of the reasons why the disposal process took longer time than usual.
“It takes time for microbes to consume oil and fat. We asked Naturals two days’ gap per week so that our microbes consume could recover after consuming the extra fat,” narrated Zulkif. So, the entire process of disposing 26 tons of ice cream took Sanjeevani S3 and Naturals more than 40 laborious days.
“Once the bacteria consumes the waste and releases methane, the gas is burnt away. We flare the methane that gets produced. It keeps burning. That’s the end. So here too, the 26 tons of Ice cream has been turned into fire,” dismayed Zulkif.
With great regret Zulkif said these words. He went on to say that it’s a waste of energy because, ideally, the methane can be converted into cooking gas or electricity. Had the facility been even more advanced technology-wise, it could have powered 30 homes in any slum of North Mumbai for a month.
“Unfortunately, the gas is not getting reused due to the infrastructural limitations at our plant. Else, it can be converted into electricity. 100m3 gas is equivalent to two-and-a-half LPG cylinders. The 26 tons of ice cream was converted into approximately 52,000m3 methane. To put it in perspective, that would equal to 1,040 gas cylinders or 6,240 units of electricity. The wastage is a problem for me as a company. I should ideally be able to monetize it,” expressed Zulkif.
Coming back to Naturals, Hemant too laments the financial losses beyond the fact that such large quantity of edible items had gone in total waste. The wastage of the entire stock had cost the company approximately Rs. 2 crore. But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg in the ice cream industry that has seen a complete crash in revenue since March this year reason; pandemic lockdown.
The market size of organized branded ice cream industry in India is about Rs. 10,000 crore, according to Pradeep Pai, MD of Hangyo Ice Cream, and a senior member of the Indian Ice-Cream Manufacturers Association (IICMA). Along organized sector, an equally large size unorganized industry also exists.
“The three months — March, April, May — saw 45% of the turnover for the entire industry. The rest of the nine months saw the balance 55% business. Out of Rs. 10,000 crore, Rs. 500-700 crore come from short-life ice cream manufacturers, which are fruit-based like Naturals. 95% of the ice-cream industry deals with long-life ice cream. Only short-life ice cream sellers had to dispose of their products because they expired. The long-life ice cream makers did not have to do that. But, the business was badly hit. Everybody lost 45% of the year’s business,” Pai explains.
“Beyond lockdown, the sale of ice cream was particularly hit by the wild rumour that ice cream causes coronavirus,” says Sudhir Shah, MD of Hyderabad-based Scoops Ice Cream and Secretary of IICMA. Despite FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) and World Health Organization’s clarifications that there’s no proof ice cream causes coronavirus, the consumer sentiment has not quite changed.
“There is a psychological fear towards cold drinks and ice creams. Nobody wants to run the risk of catching a cold amid coronavirus,” says Pai of Hangyo Ice Cream.
Industry expects the sales to remain muted the whole of this year. “There will be more than 50% drop in consumption till December. In our company (Hangyo), sales in the first quarter is just 30% compared to the same period last year. It looks very bad. Once there is no cash flow, it’s difficult to run operations,” Pai adds.
More than the organized ice cream makers, it’s the unorganized player who are devastated, according to industry insiders.
“Unorganized ice cream sellers are badly hit. 90% are shut. Small units cannot sustain this blow. It will be very difficult for them to make a comeback,” added Pai.
Interestingly, many ice cream makers are launching immunity-boosting ice creams in a last ditch effort to revive sales. Chyawanprash, Haldi (Turmeric), Isabgol, Wheatgrass, Lemon & Ginger are some of the flavours that have hit the market.
“Ice cream industry is trying to get as close to the consumers as possible. The response is positive. Lot of people are trying these flavours,” says Pai, whose Hangyo ice cream has launched the Isabgol and Wheatgrass flavours.
Recently Amul too launched Haldi ice cream as an immunity booster for the consumption during pandemic time. Like-wise many players are trying to give some variant tastes and flavours to the consumers to bring the industry back on its feet.
This season saw a complete failure in business not only did the big players suffered but medium as well as small players were the bait too. Slow the industry is limping back to normalcy.
But 26 tons of ice cream and that too of Naturals was disposed!!! It will be written on pages of the ice cream industry!!!!