International Journal Advances in Social Science and Humanities
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REVIEW ARTICLE
Elements of Cold Chain Management in Air Cargo
Mathachan PJ
1*, Jerin Johnkutty
21Cochin International Airport Limited, Nedumbassery, Kerala, India.
2Thejus Engineering College, Thrissur, Kerala, India.
*Corresponding Author: Email: [email protected]
Abstract
This paper discusses the concept of Cold Chain Management (CCM) and gives information on use, utilization, various areas where it is used and also about techniques involved in it. The paper argues that CCM can be utilized for the development of export by improving the quality of the vegetables.
Keywords:Perishable, Shelf life, Supply chain, Temperature, Vegetables.
Introduction
The term cold chain refers to two distinct components; „cold‟ refers to the need to control temperature in preventing the growth of microorganisms in food while maintaining its wholesomeness as it is processed, shipped, delivered and stored at the stores. The term „chain‟ focuses on monitoring the „chain of custody‟ in which each segment of the processing, storage, transport and delivery functions are linked to the step before and after with proper documentation and records.
Cold chain management is vital in many industries, but particularly in the transportation of vaccines, insulin and blood. Managing the cold chain requires keeping a product within a particular temperature range throughout the supply chain. This presents many challenges for pharmaceutical companies, government health agencies, transportation providers, and health care practitioners.
In today‟s retail industry, particularly in the cold chain management environment, cold chain management standards for perishable food products along the cold chain do not exist. In the absence of such a standard, there is always a potential danger of food contamination resulting from frequent breaches along the links of the cold chain. Food & Pharmacy sectors are the fastest growing sectors today. The international market is strict about the implementation of rules and regulations.
Since CCM market is still not very organized in India, cost efficiency is not looked at as the primary focus.
Hence, proper management of every link of the cold chain constitutes an integral part in the production and delivery of wholesome perishable food products to the consumers. Any breaches along the links of the chain would be hazardous and pose a serious threat to the health of consumers.
Maintenance of the Cold Chain is the best way to minimise all forms of deterioration after harvesting, including
Weight loss resulting in wilting and limpness
Softening
Bruising
Unwanted ripening
Colour changes
Texture degradation
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essential to ensure the product offered for final sale retains maximum freshness
Objective of Cold Chain Management
The temperature controlled supply chains or cold chains are a significant proportion of the retail food market. The market shares of fast foods, ready meals and frozen products have increased in recent years. There are several food temperature levels to suit different types of products. Frozen, cold chilled, medium chilled, and exotic chilled are some of the frequently used nomenclatures with specified temperature ranges, depending on the products, whether it is meat or ice cream or potatoes or bananas. With the growing demands to keep and distribute temperature sensitive products in potent condition, organizations are seeking better solutions to maintain and monitor cold chain. The success of implementing cold chain management involves continual monitoring of product temperature throughout distribution and having appropriate corrective action plans in place.
A streamlined, well maintained cold chain helps to:
Reduce costs
Improve product integrity
Increase customer satisfaction
Reduce wastage and returns of expired stock
It is Everyone’s Responsibility
Maintaining the Cold Chain is the responsibility of everyone who handles fresh produce, from production to retail sale. A breakdown in temperature control at any stage will impact on the final quality of the product, although the effect may not be visible until several days later. Without the cooperation of everyone involved in handling fresh produce, the consumer will not be able to enjoy the produce in the best possible condition.
A Cold Chain Example: Cold Chain
McDonalds
Cold Chain was one of the unique concepts of McDonalds supply chain in India, on which it had spent more than six years to get the system into place. This system brought about a veritable revolution, immensely benefiting the farmers at one end and enabling customers at retail counters get the highest quality food products, absolutely fresh and at great value. Through its unique cold chain, McDonalds has been able to both cut down on its operational wastage, as well as maintain the freshness and nutritional value of raw and processed food products. This has involved
procurement, warehousing, transportation and retailing of perishable food products, all under controlled temperatures. The following list of suppliers, who build up the major supply chain of McDonalds, reveal how this „Cold Chain‟ works and contributes towards the efficiency of
McDonalds. McDonald's urban restaurant
locations thousands of kilometers away. Post harvest facilities at Trikaya include a cold chain consisting of a pre-cooling room to remove field heat, a large cold room and a refrigerated van for transportation where the temperature and the relative humidity of the crop is maintained between 1º C and 4º C and 95% respectively. Vegetables are moved into the pre-cooling room within half an hour of harvesting. The pre-cooling room ensures rapid vacuum cooling to 2º C within 90 minutes. The pack house, pre-cooling and cold room are located at the farms itself, ensuring no delay between harvesting, pre-cooling, packaging and cold storage. With this cold chain infrastructure in place, Trikaya Agriculture has also a plan to export this high value product to other international markets, especially to McDonald's Middle East and Asia Pacific operations. McDonald's expertise in packaging, handling and long-distance transportation has helped Trikaya to do trial shipments to the Gulf successfully. In addition to export, McDonald's assistance has enabled Trikaya Agriculture to supply this crop to a number of star-rated hotels, clubs, flight kitchens and offshore catering companies all over India.
Innovative Tools for Supporting
Cold-Chain-Management
Due to globalisation food supply chains become more and more complex and thus the logistic requirements increase progressively. To ensure high quality and safe products in every step of the chain, a controlled cold-chain-management system is required. Therefore food producers and retailers become more and more interested in innovative systems to control food safety and quality over the whole chain.
There are several systems available to support cold-chain-management:
Temperature monitoring systems, e.g.
Time-Temperature-Indicators
Predictive models for shelf life and food safety,
e.g. shelf life models for meat
Rapid methods for food freshness and safety
analysis, e.g. biosensors
Packaging and storage systems to prolong shelf
The integration of innovative solutions in different supply chains is a challenge where several factors have to be considered. An important prerequisite for a successful integration is an easy adaptability to the heterogeneous structures of international food chains. Cost effective and user friendly implementation as well as the integration in already existing or new technologies and software and inspections-schemes are also important prerequisites for successful market launches.
High quality and safe products can be generated by combining innovative solution to support cold-chain-management, like temperature monitoring systems and microbiological growth models. Compared to a single solution a practical implementation of combined innovative solutions should be even more flexible according to the structure of international food chains. Usually there are no guidelines available that explain how to integrate complex solutions in different supply chains and which chain specific parameters have to be considered. Instructions about the best solutions for specific chains are also missing. This leads to long implementation phases and the result is often not sufficient for each participant.
The determination of the remaining shelf life of each step in the supply chain delivers an important contribution for safe and high quality products and it allows companies to optimise their storage management and to minimise economic losses. The development of predictive models requires a detailed knowledge of freshness loss and the behaviour of all microorganisms that are responsible for the spoilage in dependence of different influence factors
Shelf life calculations in each step of the supply chains may be estimated by traditional microbiological analyses that are very time-consuming. More cost-efficient is a combination of shelf life models with rapid methods for food- freshness-analyses to determine the actual status of special microorganisms. Another opportunity is to draw conclusion back from the temperature history of the product to the remaining shelf life. This requires a comprehensive temperature monitoring along the whole supply chain which has to take into account many different factors that depend on the different physical and chemical kinds of measuring equipments for temperature monitoring.
Cold Chain Considerations
Multiple factors must be considered in designing a cold chain. These include:
Temperature tracking: Even in refrigerated units, temperatures can vary. Temperature tracking is important to confirm appropriate temperature throughout.
Selection of containers – Container selection influences temperature variation within the unit.
Transportation provider’s ability: While, the
availability of temperature-controlled
transportation is increasing, it is still necessary to look at experience and what processes the transportation company has in place.
Distribution route: Certain transportation routes experience greater temperature variation or higher average temperatures than others. A more stable external temperature influences the internal stability.
Contingency Plans: Decisions about route, provider, container and tracking can help in the development of contingency plans, but it is important to think about backup should equipment not work, or transportation take longer than expected.
The Role of Packaging: The role of packaging can provide a buffer against variations in the distribution network. Packing that includes insulation, temperature-tracking equipment, and some form of coolant creates additional insurance in the cold chain. One simple temperature gauge that can be used is the pressure-sensitive label. Once the label is exposed to specific conditions, the label changes colour alerting the supply chain of a disruption in the cold chain. More sophisticated alternatives are also available that digitally track temperature throughout the transportation process. Many feel that these digital solutions are not cost effective.
Why Suddenly Talking about Cold
Chain?
We have realized that there is great amount of
wastage happening post Harvest.
This wastage is being estimated at 25% of total
produce
Indian Agriculture sector accounts for 26% of
country‟s GDP, produces 64% employment and 18% of country's export.
India is 2nd largest producer of Fruits &
Vegetable in the world.
India is the 2nd largest vegetable Exporter.
India‟s share is only 1% of World trade. Why
there are Losses in Post Harvest of Horticulture produce?
Shortages of Cold Storage facilities and
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handling perishables which manifests in wastages.
Some estimates say that the post harvest losses
of fruits and vegetables alone in India is more than the total production of fresh fruits and vegetables in Great Britain.
An increasingly global market: The demand for temperature controlled food and non-food is increasing in many markets across the globe. The movement of manufacturers and retailers to emerging markets in Asia and Latin America, as well as the changing assets of consumers in more mature markets, is having a profound effect on the logistics industry. This has resulted in high levels of investment by logistics companies and their associated suppliers as they have:
Acquired or partnered local players in order to
access these markets.
Opened temperature controlled operations in the
regions to serve the growth in prosperity of Local populations
At the same time, demand for chilled products from these developing markets is increasing, with a higher level of both fresh and processed food being transported to the more traditional markets of Europe and the US. This is impacting on the major shipping lanes, increasing volumes on already crowded routes and adding to congestion at the world‟s busiest ports. India‟s total perishable exports in 2007-08 were Rs 6,157 Crore. The perishable supply chain can broadly be defined as encompassing all those activities
related to movement of temperature or time sensitive food or food related goods by road, sea and air. There are various activities which are inter-related but which are also industries in themselves. It should also be recognized that the supply chain is not strictly just perishable products. As part of the rationalization of the global supply chain it is now often necessary for importers and shippers to take responsibility for the export of equipment and packaging to the third country to ensure the speed, safety and controlled movement of the perishable goods to minimize cost, time and spoilage. When the industry refers to “perishables” this can be quite a broad term and can cover a wide variety of products. For example, some pharmaceuticals are covered by the term “perishables”, as they require
controlled temperature environments and
therefore constitute a component part of the airline perishable mix [1-11].
Figure 1: Different temperature zone of CCM
Conclusion
This study brings out the meaning of Cold Chain Management and gives information on its use, utilization, areas where it is used and the techniques involved in its use. As explained in
this paper CCM can be utilized for the development of export by improving the quality of the vegetables. The current utilization as well as knowledge about CCM is very low as far as the lay man is concerned. Hence by utilizing this opportunity, it is possible to develop more export-led agriculture development.
References
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