Cold Comfort: Refrigerated Transport

The dramatic rise of the home delivery market for food and beverages, fuelled in part by the adoption of online delivery services by many supermarket chains, has raised the demand for refrigerated transport in the last few years. This does not mean that the market is forgiving for cold transport operators, however. The perfect mix of reasonable cost and uniformly high quality of equipment and systems is a tough balance to strike, but this is exactly what customers expect.

As such, innovation must always fall on the right side of the economic line and focus on delivering customers the reliability and consistency that are so important when it comes to transporting perishable foods. Nonetheless, refrigerated transport companies are continuously refining systems to improve the process, as well as limit their environmental impact.

Growing refrigeration trends

Brian Brennan, managing director of UK-based temperature-controlled courier company PDQ Specialist Transport Services, sums up the uncompromising expectations of his company’s clients. “The top priority for most of our customers is a quality service for a competitive price,” he says. “Most of our food-related customers are suppliers to major supermarket or catering operators and therefore are very cost conscious, although they still insist on their products being delivered on time and within required temperature ranges.”

High client expectations have changed the landscape of the refrigerated transport industry, with smaller companies often diminishing in the face of larger rivals, as Brennan notes.

“Refrigerated transport over the last ten years has changed dramatically; during that period we have seen the demise of the independent trailer operators, largely through the growth of the big players like Eddie Stobart.”

“In our field there has been a glut of small refrigerated couriers coming into the industry and disappearing as quickly. One larger courier operator with the assistance of a famous backer tried to take the world by storm but went into administration earlier in the year. So we are happy that we are expanding and acquiring new customers in specialist fields, as a direct result of our investment in equipment and a quality management system.”

As the refrigerated transport market matures and clients start to stress their priorities more assertively, trends have begun to emerge, as explained by Dougie Stoddart, sales director of Hubbard Products, which provides a range of vehicle refrigeration systems. “Fuel consumption is becoming a much greater factor in the selection of the correct refrigeration system for buyers. Fuel consumption can be affected by a great number of external factors, including the number of door openings, whether the delivery route is urban or rural and the type of product – fresh, frozen or chilled – that is being transported.”

As well as efficiency in fuel consumption, Stoddart says that a vehicle with the capability to keep food cold even when stationary is a major selling point. “Electric standby is becoming a popular choice and is used to pre-cool the vehicle before loading and to maintain the box temperature while the vehicle is stationary. It is ideal when vans need to be parked while loaded overnight or during an event and can be plugged into mains electricity. However, with the price of electricity rising steadily it is important that due consideration is given to sourcing the lowest tariff energy and even whether green electricity should be sourced as part of the fleet operator’s wider environmental stance.”

Cool innovations

For today’s couriers and equipment suppliers, new innovations are smoothing out the process of refrigerated transport, offering benefits to both vendors and clients.

Brennan has been impressed with the improvements made to GPS-related technologies within the cold transport sector.

“The arrival of GPS temperature monitoring facilities has totally transformed the way we can inform customers of temperature issues or malfunctions while carrying their goods,” he says. “The fact that we can instantly inform customers of actual real-time temperatures in both the UK and Europe is a great marketing and operational asset.”

Hubbard’s contributions to new refrigeration systems include the TWICE dual temperature system, which deviates from the standard single frozen compartment by allowing for two independently controlled temperature zones, allowing products with varied temperature requirements to be transported in the same vehicle with no cross-contamination of air between them.

Refrigerated transport and the environment

Given that keeping food cold during transit requires multiple electrical systems and significant fuel and power consumption, refrigerated vehicles are fairly energy intensive. But companies are working on ways to minimise or mitigate their impact on the environment, even if clients occasionally get in the way.

“As a carbon footprint-monitoring company, PDQ makes a great effort to save energy during our collection and delivery procedures,” says Brennan. “This includes having all of our vehicles below 3.5t GVW [gross vehicle weight] and restricting them to 69mph. We do have issues with some retail and catering operators insisting that vehicles under 7.5t should not be allowed on site. This creates the ridiculous situation of loads as little as 10kgs being delivered on 18t vehicles when a car derived van would be sufficient.”

As a certified supplier of Carbon Trust Energy Technology Product-listed cooling equipment, Hubbard is also prioritising green initiatives for its products. “Hubbard is investing in a programme called Research and Development for Clean Technology – developing products that deliver value using limited or zero non-renewable resources and, which create significantly less waste than conventional offerings,” says Stoddart.

According to Stoddart, one of the avenues Hubbard is exploring is “the application of hydrogen fuel cell technology that will significantly reduce carbon emissions in cool chain logistics. There are many technical, manufacturing and reliability challenges to overcome but in conjunction with high street retailers Hubbard is working to address the practicalities of the changes that are required.”

As well as attempting to limit air pollution, Hubbard has developed a system that reduces noise pollution. “Changing lifestyles have led to rapid growth in the Retail and Convenience Store sector and forecourt retailing, with sites typically trading long hours and many trading 24 hours. Many convenience stores are located in highly populated urban areas, and so it is critical that refrigeration systems are low noise,” says Stoddart.

The company responded with the 360 Alpha El refrigeration unit, which uses a belt-driven engine-mounted compressor, a quieter alternative to a separate diesel generator.

This innovation led to significant adoption of the units for the chilled delivery vehicles of UK supermarket chain Asda.

But what about the technological innovations of the future? While Stoddart emphasises Hubbard’s partnering programme with universities to make advance through exchanging knowledge with “purist technologists”, Brennan is more cautious and downbeat, suggesting that challenging operating conditions in this market favour larger companies with more significant resources to invest in technological improvement.

“The problem with the refrigerated transport industry at the moment,” says Brennan, “is that because margins are so tight, there isn’t really the money to pump back in to more high tech equipment as the costs cannot be recovered through increases in rates. The rates today are no higher than ten years ago even with the dramatic fuel increases transport companies have endured.”