All courses

Post-Harvest & Logistics

Post-Harvest Handling & Cold Chain Management

Cut rejections and extend vase life and shelf life through disciplined harvesting, grading, cooling and logistics.

2–3 days Intermediate Packhouse supervisors, cold store operators, logistics and QA teams

Course overview

Most quality loss in Kenyan exports happens after harvest. Every hour of delay and every break in the cold chain shows up as a claim at the destination market.

This course connects field harvesting decisions to packhouse throughput, cooling capacity and airfreight timelines so quality survives the journey.

What participants will be able to do

  • Harvest at correct maturity and handle produce to avoid mechanical damage
  • Run efficient grading, trimming and packing lines with quality checkpoints
  • Operate pre-cooling and cold storage with verified temperature control
  • Monitor the cold chain to the airport and interpret data loggers
  • Investigate claims and rejections with root cause analysis

Course modules

Harvest to intake

  • Maturity indices
  • Field hygiene
  • Transport
  • Intake QC

Packhouse operations

  • Line layout
  • Grading standards
  • Packaging
  • Labelling

Cold chain

  • Pre-cooling
  • Storage regimes
  • Loading
  • Loggers and verification