LAHORE, June 18: The unprecedented electricity loadshedding has rendered refrigerators at homes ineffective and the ongoing hot and dry weather has created a great demand for ice, making it the most wanted item after water in the Punjab capital.
The situation has almost doubled the ice prices and considerably decreased its quality. Available at Rs10 to Rs12 per kilo a week ago and Rs50-60 per ‘patti’, ice was being sold between Rs25 and Rs30 a kilo and Rs140-160 per ‘patti’ on Monday.
Makeshift ice shops would crop up in every locality of Lahore with the advent of summer some two decades ago when refrigerators were not common.
Of more than 50 ice factories the city had in the 1980s, some 20 or so still remain operational from April to mid-September. The production capacity of these factories ranges from 100 to 1,500 blocks of ‘crystal clear’ ice. Major chunk of the ice produced by these factories is bought by milkmen, ice cream shops and vendors, dairy stores, fish merchants, restaurants, bakers and confectioners, vegetable and fruit traders.
Ice sale begins at 4am and continues till late in the evening during the season. An ice block is being sold for Rs1,000-1,200 at the factory. Retailers sell it either by dividing it in eight parts, each called a patti, or in kilos.
An ice factory consists of a big tank filled with salt-rich water (brine) and a network of iron pipes of ammonia gas. The brine is kept around rectangle iron or steel hollow blocks -- 11 inches thin, 22 inches wide and 34 inches long -- which are filled with fresh water.
The tank is covered with wooden slabs and ammonia gas is passed through the pipes with the help of a 200-ton capacity compressor to bring the temperature to below freezing point. The process of making ‘crystal clear’ or standard ice, which is considered fit for human consumption, takes 48 hours.
Increase in production cost, market demand or long power outages ‘force’ the factory owners to sell half-frozen or ‘kachhi’ ice and the users suffer from respiratory and gastrointestinal problems.
Owner of a factory told Dawn that high cost of electricity had minimised their profits. “After paying power bills and wages of the labour, I hardly make both ends meet,” he said.