V.MFS.0446 - Technical field officer for shelf life and cold chain management trials

Summary

MLA in conjunction with University of Tasmania has developed a predictive tool which estimates shelf-life of vacuum-packed beef and sheep primals, based on historical storage temperature. By combining the use of real time loggers to remotely capture temperature data and analysing it with the shelf -life model, we are able to determine the remaining shelf-life based on the cold chain. By having supply chain visibility, actions can be taken to improve the cold chain if there are gaps or temperature abuse situations which require product to be diverted or used quickly. Initial calculations resulted in $600,000 per annum per plant, disregarding other social benefits such as better stock management and improved trust in the supply chain. Other reported benefits of cold change management which cannot be calculated to direct cost saving, include work with export food service/hotel customers, giving an additional 25 days or changing from air freight to sea freight savings of $2–4/kg.

Objectives

The desire to gain value for industry by modifying usual industry practices (that result in lack of data retrieval at the end of the journey and lack of ability to interpret the data) resulted in a number of objectives:
- implementation of the shelf-life calculator for commercial use
- review existing technologies and work practices as well as emerging technologies and implications to existing work practices for cold chain management
- assess the feasibility for the implementation of cold chain temperature traceability technology into the value chain
- adoption of cold chain management tools and define performance metrics
- gain adoption of the technology and discover the benefits that can be obtained.

Key findings

Roughly 65–70% of industry (based on production volume) has adopted this form of technology, however in terms of maximum utilisation of benefits, it is still low. Initial calculations resulted in $600,000 per annum per plant, disregarding other social benefits such as better stock management and improved trust in the supply chain.

Benefits to industry

There have been reports of temperature abuse claims from customers reducing to 0. For this calculation we kept it conservative and factored in one claim per annum, costing $100,000. This brings the total cost benefit of monitoring and reduced claims to $600,000.
There have also been other reported benefits of cold change management which cannot be calculated to direct cost savings such as:
- on-site cold chain management to improve load out temperature (reducing by 1°C gained 14 additional days shelf-life in a hotel kitchen)
- installed a rapid rolling door in a warehouse (reduced fluctuation by >1°C, gained 5.5 days, in the 14-day storage)
- identifying less than ideal storage temperatures and choosing preferred transport partners who were able to maintain temperature
- knowing and helping export markets and customers understand and manage product better (roughly 10% of shipments in export markets experience sub optimal control)
- work with export food service/hotel customers (reduced by one degree, giving an additional 25 days in the 21-day storage)
- changing from air freight to sea freight (savings of $2–4/kg). Sea freighted products arrived at the destination with more shelf-life remaining compared to air freight. This is due to cold chain of sea freight averaging at -1°C compared to air freight which is 3°C.

MLA action

Continue to investigate cold chain management tools.

Future research

It is recommended that remaining processors start reviewing their current cold chain monitoring to identify any gaps and work with providers to build a system, which may include integration via API.

The biggest benefit to using remote logging is to give product owners confidence in the cold chain, and for potential issues to be managed promptly without negatively impacting the product and customer. Alternatively, it helps assign the responsibility to the correct segment of the supply chain.