RenewDrive Solutions (RenewDrive) is a social enterprise and market pioneer in 'pay-as-you-go' storage service for fruit and vegetable farmers
combining flexible payments option with solar-powered humidification systems to enable access to a walk-in storage unit. The problem we are solving is the affordability of access to dependable cold-chain. Most of RenewDrive customers are farmers who live in rural areas and have per capita income of less than US$2 per day.
Being RenewDrive's home market, fruits and vegetables production in Nigeria stands at 23 million tons annually, while the country losses 45% of its annual vegetables and 35% fruits production due to poor storage. Forecasts for a 10-year period indicates an impending food scarcity and nutritional deficiency if nothing significant is done to plug leakages across the value chain.
To grow and scale our work, we have adopted two options; first, farmers have the option of forming cooperatives to buy their own storage unit, with subsidized repayment plans; second, we have the system installed in a central location easily accessible to farmers, where they pay a daily flat fee for each crate only if they have produce to store.
A customer pays as low as 45 cent per crate of produce per day. With access to our storage system, each crate unlocks an additional 25% earning potential for farmers. By providing storage as a service, rather than as a product, we reach the bottom-of-the-pyramid and increase the earning potential for our customers.
While many agricultural technologies are focusing on increasing the production of smallholder farmers to compensate for the current post-harvest losses, we believe it is more economical and environmentally sensible to plug the leakages. Asides our solution, there are very few post-harvest storage solutions available. You have refrigeration, which is not an option for 85% of all smallholder farmers due to lack of access to the power grid.
RenewDrive aims to expand across markets in Africa and Asia, with the ultimate goal of fixing the agricultural supply chain and providing low-cost storage access to 300,000 farmers by 2024. We are supported by Center for Food Research, Abeokuta, Nigerian Climate Innovation Center, Tony Elumelu Foundation, among others to grow and scale our work.
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