High quality stainless steel storage solutions are essential for cold chain storage of fresh produce & meat products
Logistics centers for fresh produce and processed meat require efficient cold chain storage logistics solutions that make it easy to meet food safety and quality standards. Fresh produce and meat processing logistics centers are an essential part of the global supermarket and convenience store supply chain in 2023.
What are the benefits of cold chain storage logistics solutions?
Case studies indicate several benefits are commonly associated with cold chain storage logistics solutions. The two following examples illustrate several of these, including:
- Reducing food wastage
- Facilitating centralized management of processing and distribution
- Enabling safe storage and processing of a wide range of food products in one location
Cold chain food storage logistics solutions create enormous savings when significant volumes of raw and semi-processed foods need to be managed rapidly and efficiently, making cold chain storage warehousing and logistics a significant international business.
According to the Global Cold Chain Alliance, the biggest supplier of cold chain storage is US based Lineage Logistics, with 2.8bn cubic feet of storage capacity. Global suppliers like Americold are able to offer over 1.4bn cubic feet of cold chain warehousing in the USA, South America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific region.
Food logistics and food distribution centers are often large premises with multiple cold storage and processing zones, like the Mitsui Food Distribution Centre in Nagareyama, Japan, which features three temperature zones and a refrigerated sorting center in one facility. This enables efficient, centralized management of fruit, vegetables, meat and other perishable products in one location.
Meat Processing Storage Solutions
Meat processing storage solutions require refrigeration to maintain freshness and extend the usable life of processed meat products made from beef, pork, lamb, fish or other seafood. High quality stainless steel cold storage solutions makes it easy to keep cold storage clean and hygienic, reducing the risk to human health without compromising on food quality and safety.
Cold Chain Storage For Fresh Produce
Fresh produce, including fruit and vegetables, has similar cold chain storage requirements to meat processing storage to maintain freshness, with a combination of chilled and frozen product categories that need to be efficiently stored for processing and distribution.
What About Cold Chain Storage Automation?
Post Covid labor supply shortages are increasing the use of automation in cold chain storage, so when specifying stainless steel shelving and racking you should consider if it is ‘automation friendly’ and suitable for vertical storage solutions to increase cold chain storage capacity with reduced labor requirements.
Why Are Cold Chain Storage Solutions Essential For The Meat Packing & Meat Processing Industries?
The meat packing industry includes meat processing plants that prepare cuts and minced meat as well as re-wrapping and re-packaging businesses. In all types of meat processing business it is essential to keep meat products in cold storage to reduce the risk of spoiling and ensure processed meats are safe for human consumption.
Requirements to protect the health of customers makes high quality cold chain storage solutions the standard requirement for all meat processing industries. Government regulation, approvals, and legislation are strictly enforced across a wide range of industries using cold chain storage for meat and meat products including:
- meat preparation establishments
- minced meat establishments
- meat processing and rewrapping plants
- cold stores
In the strictly regulated meat processing and meat packaging industries stainless steel cold storage solutions are an essential part of any meat industry processing plant, storage, or shipment facility. This is because it is a requirement to keep accurate records of food handling conditions and maintain very high standards of cleanliness to meet inspection standards.
What Is The Future Of Cold Chain Storage For Meat Processing?
We don’t need to worry that our favorite sausages are going to disappear soon, but we know that the meat processing plant of the future will feature cultured meat made in laboratory conditions. We are already seeing plant based imitation beef products on the market in 2023.
There will also be more automation and use of robots in future cold chain storage for meat processing. However, it will always be necessary to have efficient cold storage solutions. This is because the principles of using cold storage to maintain freshness do not change, and even imitation products need to be refrigerated for freshness.
Why Does Fresh Produce Require Cold Chain Storage?
People today expect to have access to globally sourced fruit and vegetables even when they are out of season locally. Industrial farming also produces localized surpluses of fruits and vegetables that need to be refrigerated to avoid spoilage. Cold chain storage is now essential to enable fresh produce to make it to the consumer without excessive, wasteful spoilage.
Fruits and vegetables can spoil very rapidly without careful temperature control. Changes in temperature caused by localized warming of warehouses and storage areas followed by cooling can cause serious problems by encouraging the growth of pathogens that are harmful to human health, like the recent listeria contamination of frozen fruit.
Cold chain storage of fresh produce has always been important in tropical regions where fruits and vegetables rapidly spoil and are more vulnerable to harmful insects, fungus and bacteria. We now find refrigerated warehousing and logistics are becoming increasingly important in temperate zones as well due to increasing global temperatures caused by climate change.
If we look at the historical figures from the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW), we can see the expansion of global cold chain storage in all regions. To take one example, 2023 global leader Lineage Logistics has more than tripled their cold chain storage capacity since 2017.
The Essential Stages Of Cold Chain Storage Logistics Solutions
Cold chain storage logistics solutions demand effective and robust stainless steel work tables, stainless steel pallet racking, shelving systems and stainless steel mobile carts to enable efficient controlled temperature storage through the many essential stages of meat and fresh produce management.
What are the nine essential stages of cold chain storage logistics?
- Inventory management
- Pre-cooling of meat and fresh produce
- Weighing and labeling
- Sorting and streaming
- Grading by quality and use
- Processing into final product form
- Packaging of meat, vegetable and fruit products
- Refrigerated transport to bulk storage and warehousing
- Refrigerated delivery services to consumers and local retailers
IJang cold chain storage logistics solutions help you to store and handle temperature sensitive products more efficiently through every stage of the process. Our cold chain storage solutions extend shelf life, maintain freshness, increase throughput and help you to manage the safe movement of temperature sensitive meat and fresh produce.
IJang cold chain storage logistics solutions for your business
From rugged, hygienic stainless steel work tables like our three tier stainless steel work table shown above, to moving storage rack systems, we offer a holistic service to meet all your cold chain storage logistics solutions. Our attention to detail and rigorous quality management ensure you will have reliable storage equipment that will last for years to come.
We not only manufacture cold chain storage logistics solutions, but also build stainless steel storage solutions for food storage & display as well as general commercial & industrial storage solutions that demonstrate our three decades of experience in manufacturing storage products for a wide range of industries.
Contact us to discover how our comprehensive range of stainless steel storage systems and products can help you improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your cold chain storage logistics for meat and fresh produce.
