Godrej Appliances plans to launch in January a -70 degree Celsius ultra-low temperature Freezer for storing vaccines, company’s officials told Mint on Wednesday. We are preparing ourselves for -70 (degree Celsius) freezers also, in case the requirement comes in domestically or internationally After we launch the freezers in January, we will start applying for any tenders, Kamal Nandi, the company’s business head and executive vice-president, said. Nandi, however, said they have not yet had any discussions with the central government on supplying them ahead of the launch of covid-19 vaccines.
The ultra-low temperature freezers are crucial for storage of Pfizer’s messenger RNA vaccine against covid-19, which requires conditions of -70 degree Celsius. The US-based firm’s application for emergency licensure for import of the vaccine into India will soon be taken up by an expert committee set up by the Drug Controller General of India V.G. Somani. If the panel is satisfied with Pfizer’s data in a meeting, then the vaccine could get emergency licensure as early as the end of this month itself. Godrej will be the first Indian company to manufacture a commercial ultra-low temperature medical freezer, and it is currently in the process of testing.
The -70 degree (Celsius) freezer is still in testing… Our guess is that this will be priced somewhere between ₹7-8 lakhs for 200-300 litres. We will arrive at a final price when our refrigerators get qualified (after regulatory testing) and get approved, Jaishankar Natarajan, assistant vice-president and head of new business development for the company, said. Godrej Appliances had last month announced that it will commission 11,856 units of vaccine refrigerators and deep freezers worth ₹95 crore across India over the next six months, under the Universal Immunization Programme of the union health ministry, after it won a tender floated by the government.
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