Smart kitchens firm Sheffield goes into cold rooms, health

Suresh Kanotra

Sheffield Africa Managing Director Suresh Kanotra.  

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • In 2015, the firm started a cold-room panel manufacturing plant in Kenya, the first-of-its kind in Sub-Sahara Africa.
  • The firm adopts smart innovations and offers its customers the most advanced food processing and food finishing technologies.

Synonymous with smart commercial kitchens Sheffield Africa is carving a new market niche in cold-rooms, laundry and healthcare solutions, with pioneer innovations.

In 2015, the firm started a cold-room panel manufacturing plant in Kenya, the first-of-its kind in Sub-Sahara Africa.

The company is now able to make the facilities within two-week’s and has already put-up spaces for agriculture, hospitality and other food processing sectors.

Managing director, Mr Suresh Kanotra, said in an interview last week that they are always on the lookout for innovative ideas. “The DNA of Sheffield Africa has been to continuously evolve, innovate and excel in customisations,” says Mr Kanotra.

A die-hard entrepreneur, Mr Kanotra defied the 2020 global recession and an ensuing pandemic to innovate cold storage solutions for sensitive medicines, and stainless-steel equipment for hospitals and mortuaries.

Sterilisation appliances

In 2020, Sheffield added touch-free handwashing solutions, disinfecting and sterilisation appliances to its stable.

The firm adopts smart innovations and offers its customers the most advanced food processing and food finishing technologies.

“With some of our smart equipment, our customers are able to know the temperature of food stored and are able to trace entire food chain – the batch that was processed, the temperature changes it went through, and have the entire history of any batch of food processed,” he told Smart Business.

“This gives the client consistency, optimum utilisation and a much smaller carbon footprint. One smart machine has got more productivity than an equal lineup of six machines,” Mr Kanotra says.

Sheffield says it is now ready to partner with various county governments, co-operatives and individual farmers to help them store their produce in a bid to cut post-harvest losses.

He said the firm has adopted solar technology to run cold-rooms and have them installed in remote areas where there is no power grid.

The PUF panels are also being used to prefabricate facilities for putting up schools, health clinics and hospitals, food retail and any other temporary facility for industry and to make very big warehousing units.