Entrepreneurs’ Programme - Cold Chain Optimisation for SME’s

partners has seen down the bottom of the page over the coming months we'll be rolling out with our project partners further webinars uh on significant areas of interest to the food sector such as food waste and manufacturing sustainable packaging and digital supply chains following each of these webinars further assistance will be available through the entrepreneurs program and the project partners on a one-to-one basis or as groups of firms as brett's already mentioned these webinars will be recorded for future educational use by aus industry and our project partners i'll now pass over to mark mitchell chairman and dr greg picker executive director of the australian food coal chain council on how to optimize your coal chain over to you mark greg thanks john we'll just set up our screen here okay okay everybody um my name is greg picker i'm with the executive director with the australian food coal chain cards and i'm doing a very short introduction um and i guess the purpose of my introduction uh as we were talking before it was described a bit as the sort of shock and awe um uh part component of this um you're gonna hear you've heard a bit about food waste in the australian context and you're going to hear a lot more going forward and the reason you're going to hear more going forward is it's a significant issue it's a significant issue for the country in terms of what it means in terms of our society and community in terms of people going hungry it's a significant issue economically in terms of what it means to our efficiency as a nation and in our international competitors but it's also a significant issue uh odd content and mark will tell you more about what you can do about it in relation to what it means for you for your businesses and the specific communities out in in which you live why do i say that um well recent research has confirmed that we lose nearly four billion dollars farm gate prices as a result of food waste overall uh from the cold chain the majority of which comes from annual losses of fruit and vegetables um we lose uh 1.9 million tons annually of that uh that's worth about three million dollars and you see the stats i will go through them um but that's just what we lose immediately through the full food chain i mean the other thing to clearly recognize is when we have temperature abuse on a product through in the cold chain um that abuse can carry through the product may deliver we've all had the example when we purchased something from a shop we brought it home and it's not lived its natural life before we could consume it and the reason is temperature abuse so if anything the figures i'm going to give you undersell the detail of the problem if you could go to the next slide please mark you'll see that and again i'm using these to highlight this was as i said done from a recent study that was released a year before i'm sorry last year that there are various products throughout the australian economy and this is australian data where we have massive losses we lose over half of the mangoes that are leave the farm cold farm gate don't actually arrive to consumers they're lost in the cold chain on the way through think about what that means think about the significance of these losses in terms of the efficiency of the product in terms of wasted transportation waste since cold stores um and why do we lose them if we go to the next store um next slide please uh we lose them really uh or how can we make it better it's the same thing really there's three really things uh that that we can do to improve things cheaply and easily the first thing and by far the biggest and something that af triple c is focusing on and we hope you'll think about it too very much um we need to be better at how we handle food we need to ensure that food when it arrives at a loading dock doesn't sit in the sun that when it arrives at the loading dock the back door the truck isn't open we need to ensure that the tracking technology that's available now we don't need fantastic new widgets there are fantastic new widgets so we can certainly use them where possible but if we can better use the technology that we have today we can track the food in real time we know the conditions it's under and respond quickly this can make a difference but just as importantly as better handling just as important as better tracing is chain of custody documentation and approaches we have to ensure that as food moves through the cold chain from the supplier to the transport company to the cold store to another transport company into an end user that all of those are interlinked that they recognize that there's a shared responsibility for managing food as it goes through the supply chain so the short version of what i'm trying to say is two things yes houston we have a problem the problem is significant and it's costly but we have the broad solutions to fix them and what mark's going to tell you now is more specifically about what we can do so that's my bit of shock and all and i hope it's been a good introduction to the topic mark over to you thanks greg ladies and gentlemen um firstly thanks again for um attending the session today and uh as greg has just indicated uh our presentation today is intended to provide an overview of the food cold chain and an introduction to some of the guiding principles and requirements necessary to to improve it the content and conclusions today are presented from the results that work and work that i am currently doing as a cold chain practitioner myself with my own company super cool and from the policies and objectives currently unfocused by greg and i at the australian food coal chain council which i am the current chairman and greg is the executive director we are obviously in collaboration with all our affiliated partners in this presentation um and with the department of oils industry whose logos are shown on this slide as well so start things off as greg has just given us the broader context of ah what's going on um compliance really um is about world's best practices now and it's on the australian agenda um my aim today is to give you an overview of the cold chain and the basic principles to make it to try and make it work properly and look at some of the issues and challenges um to an industry which is generally not always implementing existing or new technologies that are available to it i know some of you heard me say this before and i know this is the situation with so many other sectors in our industry we have the technology we have the standards we have the systems we need to ensure that we use them all properly and broadly the optimized cold chain that we're talking about today is one which uses all of these properly and as this slide says here it's a new game now food loss and wastage is well and truly on the agenda secondly commercial considerations should no longer ignore the opportunity for flw reduction and thirdly we already as we have said and you'll hear us say it again throughout this presentation we have enough first level technology to optimize our cold chain through implementation of what is already existing so let's start with the heavy stuff first um and look at some of the terminologies that need to be known what is a cold chain so as this as this slide says cold chain is a temperature controlled supply chain of separate refrigerated events sufficient to achieve continuous temperature control of perishable boots an unbroken or compliant cold chain is an inner is an in uninterrupted series of events used to store and transport personal products from one destination to another the modern cold chain is based on the principles of hassan which identifies food processing and delivery procedures at their individual steps to ensure food quality and integrity including temperature a process and requirement not not unknown to to the people listening here today and this temperature must be maintained from the beginning to the end steps in a hasset process process are separated into control points and critical control points a cold chain critical control point is where the food temperature and the environment is controlled such as inside a warehouse or in a monitored refrigerator transport a cold chain critical control point is where there is no temperature control which typically are those areas of the chain where the goods are handled from one control point to the next or transported in an asset with inadequate controls [Music] to further understand these steps it is crucial that any hasset process must be treated as a quality management system and this is fundamental to its proper execution verification is a is is a test or a measurement of a system to prove that it meets its specified requirements at a particular stage or step validation is an activity that ensures a product meets the needs of the end user upon completion of the process they are two different things verification and validation and it's very very very important to understand the difference between these two things in cold chain language this means temperature temperature verification must occur at all cp and ccp steps during the cold chain process validation takes place at the end point when the end user is satisfied the product is in a quality condition can be eaten this is made possible by standard endpoint temperature checks and a review of the temperature records from the relative cold chain process verified to ensure temperature abuse did not occur during the storage or journey transport of that of that food item sorry to labor on these definition points a bit but they are important and uh we will be coming back to them regularly through the presentation um so let's so the next few slides we're going to look at some some examples and some scenarios a cold chain process between its starting and end point uh is principally driven by three sections or activities and i've shown them in this diagram here principally there's a refrigeration system involved throughout throughout the process there's the requirements and specifications around containers vehicle body building and transport and storage facilities and then there's the actual process itself which is the documentation procedure activity written around carrying food through the assets and technology that you have in that process um the process is pretty simple when food is stored and transported at its correct temperature losses are reduced and shelf life is honored when food is transported at the right temperature the chances or even possibility of that food becoming an flw victim are dramatically decreased or eliminated and when it comes to shelf life i've used the term honored here on this slide because that's exactly what it is anyone in the food supply chain has a responsibility to honor the promised food growers and manufacturers make regarding food shelf life there are essentially two types of cold chain there's the end to end and there's the closed loop closed loop is generally generally speaking a bit easier to manage and monitor but both demand ownership of the temperature when the question is asked in this example we're using three degrees is the temperature for the for the transported food item but when the when the question is asked who's three degrees is it who owns the three degrees the answer the correct answer is it's everybody's responsibility to own the temperature through either end to end or closed loop as we said earlier this cold chain is a series of vents broken into control points critical control points the industry as we know it today does very little to connect it completely together aggressive commercial instruments unrealistic market forces continue to keep the chain unbroken um majority of the time when when this happened when this happens uh the cold chain becomes a series of refrigerated events and not an actual coal chain in a compliant cold chain on the other hand there's complete cooperation across the critical control point it recognizes the twin responsibilities of the deliverer and the receiver and it proves product temperature from start to end in this slide you can see two people or two organizations cooperating at the ccp they are exchanging product temperatures or temperatures there is a transparency and cooperation there is responsibility and safety at play this is distinctly different from hiding temperatures where only selfish commercial considerations are considered this is the big message for today for for today and i'm going to say that if you are a cold chain practitioner and want to be part of an optimized cold chain then you must become an optimizer to become an optimizer you need to be a verifier you are a verifier in the cold chain process if that process allows you to measure temperature at all points and hand them over during receiving and delivery and be transparent with your with your temperatures this is the fundamental process and requirement in verifying temperatures across all these points in the chain and it bleeds into all those other statements that we know about measurement and recording data if you don't measure it you can't fix it if you can't fix it if you can't fix it you can't change it if you can't measure it you can't fix it all those basic principles of quality management kick in and handing the temperatures over at critical control points and verifying and being transparent is the key absolute key fundamental requirement in making the call chain in australia and globally much better than it is today so we'll use some examples here we'll look at some typical this is a typical long-haul example um in australia uh which has at least nine major transfers in the chain because there's rail involved this is a good point to remind everybody that we have a very very we have a very hard cold chain uh in australia we've got a long cold chain we've got lots of use of different types of assets we live in one of the hottest climates in the world and we have a very very low population base so um none of none of the things i'm just going to say to anybody here today is going to for one minute diminish the enormous challenge of achieving a compliant cold chain in australia it it it is a challenge and it is not easy to do um so you know a long a long-haul journey which goes from storage to to truck to rail container back to truck then back to storage again um is a rather significant challenge to achieve and not and not not so much seen a lot of other countries so in that cold chain the monitoring of data points um are significant uh there are two key critical control points in in a cold chain of that of this nature with three what we call journey points all requiring verification so verification can be done manually or continuously uh using live monitoring or simple manual data acquisition with a thermometer particularly at the at the ccps journey data should be at least the minimum as shown in the blue on this slide which is fridge performance product temperature and air temperature and there are tons of telematic systems and and technology alternatives available out there to for all stakeholders to be able to monitor their assets whether it's a storage asset or a transport asset i'm focusing on transport assets today because principally they are they are the trickiest to do so whenever you see me talking about a refrigerated asset and you see me talking about a a truck i'm talking about storage as well because it's all the it's all the um same requirement and if you unpack the actual critical control point itself it also they also have their own points so typically um a fast-moving modern loading dock can have up to six separate steps of its own just in the crossover point between storage and getting loaded into a container or a trailer i won't go through these individually we could we'd actually talk about this slide just for now today on its own um and of course i'm happy to talk to anybody after this presentation about these about these points but um and these points these points um need to be fully understood at the loading at loading point or when there's a change of custody or change of refrigeration which is where a ccp occurs you have to understand the point so that you can write process around it so that the food or the item that you transporting doesn't actually undergo temperature abuse you have to have it in the right time at the right temperature uh to be loaded at the right time and on on a modern loading dock sometimes the right time is not always there and the right place is not always there so you need to you need to this needs to be fully understood and it's the same and unloading as well so this is the same critical control point in unloading so when the truck or container is unloaded onto the dock it's the same thing in reverse and you know recognizing these individual steps within the ccp goes really strongly towards determining the best time and place to measure temperature and and also formulate a really strong process document well as greg and i have said a couple of times already there's stacks of hardware and alternatives available for measuring temperature [Music] the absolute key to all this is use use whatever whatever brand make type of device technology that's available there's stacks of it out there the absolute key to it is not just having the system not just collecting the data not just mining the data but to actually use it to build a robust a robust process around it based on proof of product temperature to ensure that food is delivered safely which is the key the key thing product product temperature monitoring is the ultimate um uh particularly if it is continuous taking temperatures at the end points uh is is sometimes not good enough um you know in an end-to-end journey or a closed-loop journey um so lots of technology out there is this just shows a a trailer with a product temperature inserted in in the lettuce so it's taking continuous data for the temperature of that product in in in the transport section um if product programming is not is not required or not or not possible in either storage or transport temperature mapping is second best to probing so if you've got a storage facility or a transport asset that can be temperature mapped properly um and once again it must be continuous and automatic and you can write some wonderful algorithms around your air temperature provided you validate the refrigeration system and the process in that storage facility or that transport asset that lines up with the assumption you make out of your temperature probes and their positions in the transport asset and and storage facility in this particular case um this is actually off of a real piece of data three temperature probes over a journey over time t1 was on an average of of two degrees t2 was average of three and t3 was an average of four you write a simple algorithm um depending on the system that you have and that can tell you that your average journey temperature in this asset over time was three degrees and with the right airflow and the right packing and stacking of the product you could deem provided and provide you verified that the product was loaded at three degrees you could you could verify that the product temperature has maintained three degrees in this transport smart product probe technology is also here i won't explain it now it's a bit of another topic but once again i can be contacted after this if anybody wants to know about that and there are several out there now which is um which is great um systems vary from simple to quite sophisticated either way the industry as i said we said earlier is not in need of necessary in need of new technology there's already plenty of it my company for instance monitors temperature assets all over asia pacific and this this slide here has been taken from a fleet in india with their permission this is a fleet of of of containers and trailers showing the running status temperature location and alarms are shown on each line for each asset and if you click on one of those assets you get very detailed information there's available about the current journey door openings air temperature fluctuations in air temperature fridge performance alarms and location of the asset if it's got gps fitted to the temperature recorder on the asset current current and historical records are available live or by email or from historical archive um this is a so i'm essentially just showing you this slide today so that you can see what is actually possible i'm not necessarily promoting that everyone needs to go to this level for their particular call chain process but it just demonstrates that there's good technology out there now so now let's talk about the assets a bit more um there are eight essential features to make a compliant call chain transport or storage asset without all these in place the asset self is not a control point and becomes a critical control point the last thing in the world you want is your asset to be actually a critical control point um and you don't want it to be a source of issues and events so so the aim particularly in the transport assets is to try and achieve all these all these features that you see on this slide here um and sadly in australia we don't see too many um uh complete compliance of a lot of a lot of transport assets i even i even do get some surprise sometimes to walk into storage assets and they don't have sufficient systems in place either to achieve uh total compliance in this as i've described here as you can see most of it's mostly pretty much common sense if you're in the cold food storage or or cold chain business it should be straightforward of course one of the key assets is thermal efficiency so um and uh thermal efficiency in in in the in refrigeration world and culture and world is defined as the k value of an asset um so in this example you can see the difference between in the in the power required to hold minus 18 degrees in a refrigerator body on a 38 degree day so you've got a 56 degree temperature between the inside and the outside between a thermally efficient body which is which with a k value of about 0.8 k value and a low efficient body of 1.5 k value and the energy the energy required to maintain minus 18 between the two bodies of the two different k values is almost double um so you can see there that the point at the the better efficient body of 0.8 k value you you need 5.49 kilowatts of refrigerating power to maintain minus 18.

whereas at the same body which had leaking rubbers and thin walls and poorly made floor or a hole in the roof and was not airtight and had quite a bad k value of 1.5 or even up to two k value you need 10.3 kilowatts of revenue power so it's double double the energy and we see that this little example here we see a lot we see a lot in our travels in australia a lot of refrigerated transport assets are just not up to the job when they're just not compliant and they're just not thermally efficient um and this is another this is another big a big challenge in in australia uh the nexus flight slides will show some examples of when things go wrong and this is a big one um where logistics and payload dominate um and food safety is sec secondary uh this stock is moving you can see it it's touching the sides of the container or the uh trailer um either on the whole palette so in in the in the diagram on to your right you can see the whole palette that's moved inside the trailer and it's touching the wall or um the stock has moved on the pallet um in the in the diagram on the left they're different problems same result um the food is touching the wall of the asset but the walls of the acid are essentially heaters so once you get the stock touching the wall and there's no air between the stock and the wall you've got no convection no refrigeration so the stock just gets heated up by the heat coming through the wall um different areas of responsibility two different causes for this um and it's it's another big issue that we see in in long-haul transport in australia restricted air flow is another common one [Music] caused by this moving stock or incorrect stacking in the in the in the trailer um there's a couple of examples there there's two pallets there touching in the middle no airflow between them pallet touching the wall again or stacked incorrectly at the back so you've got short cycling of air down the back of the transport this can also happen in a storage facility uh invariably we see this in some storage facilities um we generally find that some of the bigger stores um oh and small ones i shouldn't just pick on the big stores uh you know there'll be a corner that's not as good as the other corner or the middle is sometimes not as good and so it becomes very crucial to map the temperatures of the rooms and the asset to ensure that you're maximizing the packing and stacking of the products uh in the assets so airflow airflow is really important uh in refrigeration it's looking there's lots of there's lots of things i could talk about refrigeration for hours today but i'm just going to pick on the main ones that that we see in cold chain airflow is the one that tricks everyone um there's a lot of that there's a lot of other attributes to refrigeration of course there is um but airflow is the one that that that confuses everyone and the main points to understand airflow is that good airflow produces heat convection so you get heat transfer between the air and um and the item you're trying to cool it's it's a crucial for maintaining temperature in in in storage facilities and transport assets moving air is forced convection still air is free convection um and in in in a in a cold chain environment you need as much forced air convection as possible as you can see in this diagram there's not lots of nice cold air flowing around all the stock um sufficient forced air convection uh occurs in a in a trailer uh or a storage facility once again with with velocity air velocities of greater than about half a meter a second that's not a lot of airflow at all and inadequate forced air and free ear convection occurs at velocities of zero of course or up to 0.1 meter meter of a second so i've just tweaked this diagram here a little bit and assumed and you can see as we see down the back the airflow is not flowing fast enough to get back to the refrigeration unit to have the the heat removed for it the air is so slow moving here at the back of the trailer that it's picking up heat from the sides the ceiling and the floor and could even be the product and heating up and staying there so the air the air doesn't make its way back not enough velocity so the whole back of the trailer or the transport turns into a raised temperature area packing stacking packaging and wrapping is also um plays a major role in airflow and i know um pierre on the team at the next session next week will be will be touching on this very point um they're four different things packaging packing stacking and wrapping uh either can block airflow sufficiently to negate convection and introduce conduction into the product and and doing the wrong thing with the way your wrap will stack stock on your pallet can completely undo good refrigeration no matter how good that refrigeration is the other really strong point to make here is finger pointing finger pointing is really big in cold chain so when temperature rules are broken no one really generally wants to take responsibility cold chain by nature attracts finger pointing because the activity is shared by stakeholders um and yet in australia the decision making and responsibility is not based on shared facts and data so so back to airflow one of the biggest causes of abuse and finger pointing disputes is is often airflow 90 times airflow this is a typical airflow excuse chart i'm not going to read it all out um taken from a couple of real real real world examples uh where we've had to do a cold chain audit um but it's it's a typical series of events with each party uh shifting the blame airflow is particularly difficult for everyone to understand so the it's not me it's not my fault mentality kicks in and and finger pointing really really continues and who is ultimately responsible when in in in most airflow issues where the temperature abuse has occurred well it's usually everybody to some degree level the um culprits usually as this slide i won't read each point on this slide um but it's usually the loading and the transportation points is where it's usually the prime co-op it's where more than one thing can go wrong um and it makes it which and it makes it easy because it's more than one thing wrong it makes it easier to hide from responsibility and finger point so so a load so products can be loaded incorrectly uh and they're moving on the load but actual fact they've got they're in the wrong packaging and then someone's wrapped it incorrectly um and then or it's been stacked too high so so you get into a a dispute starts going on between the food owner the forklift driver the loading dock the truck driver um and most of the time when we go out to look at a cold chain audit we we ended up uh trying to be peacemakers everyone generally speaking and point out to everybody that look there's more than one thing wrong here and often there's a secondary responsibility in australia that we see that a lot secondary responsibility falls can fall on the refrigeration system itself because it's generally not fit for purpose it's not been fitted properly or it's not fit for purpose according to the manufacturer's recommendation and one of the big ones in this is we often see assets with the wrong unit on them the two the unit's too big or too small or it's the wrong it's the wrong setup for the load that was that's in question we see that a lot and also the container and trailer is not fit for purpose we very rarely see uh trailers and and containers that have been certified um and that they can produce good good service records for assets um and often when we ask for them they're not for records they're not forthcoming so so i can i can tell you absolutely confidently nearly every time that my company and my me personally were called out to to look at a temperature abuse event um and solve a dispute it's always more than one thing and more than one area of responsibility so let me finish on this slide i'd like to just finish with a couple of recommendations for further reading and some more resources of course number one i'd like to point out to you that the australian food culture and council has a great website we've just um finished the basic principles of thermometers and how to use them which is uh which is part of our hopefully our ultimately a series of five cold food codes that we want to introduce to the industry here in australia and also there is associated training around this code so if you went to our went to our website um and go and click on the training tab there's some online training around um basic principles of cold chain some of the some of the information i've covered in my presentation today is in is in the training and also a whole raft of new points and tips [Music] and information and knowledge on how to use thermometers properly um if you think you know how to use a thermometer properly just think be careful but be careful what you commit to until you do our training so um so so i'll throw that one down uh the other um book that i'd like to um make you all aware of it's my favorite um i've been reading this book now for 10 years it's the fao who guidance to governments on the application of hassef in small and or less developed food businesses generally developed at less developed countries as well but it's very very business focused by nature this publication and it's a terrific it's my favorite publication of all the publications online about hassef and the principles of it and why you apply it and why you do it and what's involved and what is it um this is probably the best one so you can grab it it's on the fao the fao website is a wonderful source of information and um and further study material for anything to do with food safety and and um and how the hell we're gonna feed the planet in the next 50 years um it's a great great website but grab that one that's a particularly good one and the third one on the on the slide there is the third way study that greg talked about earlier in the earlier in our presentation about the um study for food waste and food cold china in australia um is another there's another really really good piece of reading um and that is all from me thanks for thanks for listening thanks mark it's greg here um as you know i've been asked to to relay the questions to you uh and as indicated you know we'll keep the questions uh anonymous um so that um you know in terms of the record but please as i go through if people have other questions that come up um please please add them to the list i may sprinkle a few additional ones in but delighted to get as many questions as we can um and at the moment mark i'm gonna sort of break the questions up and first ask you some questions that have come through about temperature um and they're the sort of i think a good place to start so the first question really is uh is there a fixed temperature uh that that food should be transported at is it something that the industry should decide how do you know what temperature um you know various products should be at and and are there they're products that require different temperatures and if you could just explain some of the basics around that that would be great yeah sure that's common that's common question that um and look the first thing to say about that is yes it was definitely set set temperatures for specific food products they are clearly outlined in a number of different australian and global standards um and of course you know we will we will be looking at those in the new cold food code in more detail later in the year but those temperatures are already there and they're well recognized there are some temperatures for chilled produce that are that are all encompassing and general in nature so as a general rule uh chill products between one and three degrees there's a large group of chilled products that can be kept and stored and and it's acceptable to to carry them between one and three degrees um so that number keeps coming up a lot and even up to five degrees so i um so i i get asked by coal chain transporters regularly uh i want to set all my trailers with all my trucks at five degrees is that okay my answer to that is you are one stakeholder in that cold chain if you want if you can and want and and you're only capable of carrying it five degrees you need to go back to your client or the food owner and ask them is it acceptable from a safety point of view for me to carry that food item on my six hour journey or an eight hour journey at five degrees um and and that's where you've got to start it's a matter of risk um i have exactly the same question about from a transporter carrying land the other day wanted to know whether could he carry it he's been asked to carry the lamb at one to two i wanted to know where the four degrees was okay and i said well it's a very very low risk to carry land four but you need to you need to confirm it with your um your food owner and the client to see where you land as far as the safety of that goes but most important in all this if you are going to claim that i will carry my food at four degrees or three degrees or five what i say to everybody is that's fine do that and confirm it with your food adam but you better make sure that you can prove it this is the main thing it's it's not good enough to say oh i'm going to i'm going to be slightly out of the specification and i'm going to carry i'm going to carry it four not two but hey if you want proof i can't give it to you or i won't give it to you i always say prove it okay great and and mark just a follow-up question for that is the the same what's the difference between transporting chill products and frozen products uh in terms of requirements other than the basic temperature uh beyond that are the principles the same are there other major differences principles are exactly the same except the transport asset is a far more significant k value so it's a it's a an asset that should be set up for frozen so it must have uh a a good floor or good roof um in the asset and also the refrigeration system must be capable of doing frozen it must have temperature control logic in the controllers to do hot gas defrost cycles at the right time and to handle those low temperatures generally speaking in transport most frozen goods in this country have carried at the international standard minus 18 to minus 20. some are -22 but um yes it's a you need a good asset to carry frozen at a compliant temperature and and mark just following up from that is there any real difference or what are the main differences between transporting food that needs to either be kept cold and frozen and pharmaceuticals cosmopolitans that that that also have to be kept at particular temperatures same process exactly the same process greg yeah some of the pharmaceutical cold chain processes do require stricter tolerances on the on the sensors used either in product or air so when you you you will hear some of some of us in the in the control and sensor industry in colchain you'll hear people say oh it's a pharmaceutical grade sensor or it's a pharmaceutical grade temperature recorder it is no different to the technology and sensors used in food cold chain other than it's a slightly more accurate system it might go down to an accuracy tolerance of plus or minus 0.25 of one degree rather than point five of one degree that's the big difference in in pharmaceutical cold chain and food culture what do you do um mark in in the situation and you can certainly imagine this happening in in remote australia but it can happen all over the place uh where there's because of the lack of transport you have to combine various products and what are the issues in combining products where particularly they have um different temperature requirements potentially or there are other and are are there other issues um you need to to manage uh in relation to that uh to co-transporting products like that um greg good question sometimes can be a recipe for disaster um combining the wrong products together particularly if they're of a different nature in in specific heat qualities um the general rule is to try and combine um products that are compatible uh in in their in their specific uh heat qualities um um and look a lot of food items are um i wouldn't recommend i remember i did one an audit on a cold chain loading dock um [Music] a year ago and um at the end i was waiting we were waiting at the end for the particular trailer to arrive and mixed in with the food at the end of that cold chain were plasma tvs push bikes and pool chlorine yeah so um um so our audit report clearly uh deemed that to be an unacceptable um unacceptable behaviour but those items are not compatible with holding temperature uh in an asset or in storage with uh with a food item so okay well and thinking about what goes in a truck um and particularly about how you might package a trucker just we have a question here about what impact do you think that that pallet stretch wrapping might have on temperature control so what impact so i'm going to miss that what impact could or does pilot stretch wrapping have on temperature control yes look um that's a good question um it depends um it really depends on on the technique used so there is two types some of the modern um pallet plastic wrapping systems now line up holes in that wrapping with hulls in the packaging um also if the palette can be wrapped uh provided there's a chimney in the middle uh there's a number of different ways that you can still get the air through the pallet even if it's fully wrapped it's really just a bit of a common sense exercise that you just need however you wrap it and stack your palettes you just need to make sure that there is enough airflow and you can as i said in my presentation you can go down as low as point one of a second of a meter of the air velocity as long as you've got air getting in there somehow but i went to the aip conference and kept the narrative um narrative took me over to a great um booth and they showed me the latest in in classic wrapping and what it did so there was a this machine had used using wrapping that and holes in it and it was computerized of course in such a way that when it wrapped the hole in the wrapping lined up with the hole in the side of the packaging on the pallet i thought that was really clever and and you do see that in europe um and that's the clever way to do it okay great look uh just i'm gonna ask a follow-up on that that that's been asked uh but just for everyone else's purpose um uh i think i've gotten the indication that we're gonna go over time and work through the questions obviously we recognize people may have to leave uh but we've got quite a few questions to go through and mark if you have a few minutes you're happy to go a bit a bit yeah sure okay cool yeah uh so um joe so since we're talking about uh packing of trailers um is there a recommended distance that you need to keep product away from the walls or ceiling as long as there's a gap so good question dif different products of a different weight and size require different treatment for sure but the the key is you've got to prove you you've got to prove your own process here and this is where where verification come comes in so if you're doing if you're doing the same thing over and over again packing the same product on the same pallet in the same mode of transport you should have a validation process in place that that designates the right air gap for you and that product and the key is to have a sufficient air gap between the product and the wall and other pallets of product to give you that sufficient airflow so that air convection is taking place um so look as as a general rule it's somewhere between 20 and 30 millimeters um is sufficient in it in a tightly packed container um some of the clever um clever stack uh stacked um pallets have a rebate so that the product is just comes in inboard from the pallet just 20 mil so then when when there's two pellets buttered up against each other you've got 20 mil from one 20 ml from another so you've got a total of 40 ml uh in gap between two pellets which is yes we're starting to see that a lot more now which is great okay mark so out of curiosity we have a question here if there are so many ways that that we can screw things up and get it wrong you know stuff's wrapped wrong it leans up against the wall etc etc how often do you think we get it right oh look i think uh i think prince i think principally in australia majority of the time we get it right um of course we do we've got some wonderful transporters in this country doing a fantastic job um um but there's enough um not going right for for for to be declared a little bit of a to be declared a little bit of a problem in australia one of the one of the big issues um that i see on this point greg which is what i made in the presentation is that the cold chain is principally broken in australia there's not many complete coal chains there's lots of really good sections so there's you know there'll be a transport section where there's a two transporters even working together and they're doing a great job they have absolutely no idea what happened before they picked up the product and they have absolutely no idea what happens after they deliver it because there's no cooperation a lot of storage facilities do a great job hand the temperature over at the ccp right take the product good to go and then it goes into a black hole no one ever knows what happened and then that transporter doesn't hand that temperature over until we see temperature by temperature by temperature at every point we won't be able to satisfy ourselves that our whole chain in australia is compliant yep okay thanks look uh just onto some questions around data um out of curiosity one of the questions is is are we able to get live feeds of data at critical control points clearly we can get them in the trunks but can you also or or trail or whatever the transport mechanism is but can you get them at the control points as well and how do we go about that um you mean in a transport asset so as whether it's a loading docker or whatever it might be can do we have the capacity to get live data of food from when it leaves the farm gate all the way through the various transport mechanisms and storage mechanisms and critical control points to when it arrives at the grocery store or wherever the the final venue is of course of course it's possible in europe there are there are end end user stakeholders in the food systems in europe that demand nothing less i can tell you in germany france sweden norway there isn't one fast food outlet um uh restaurant chain there's lots of them that will accept one food item in cold chain unless they can see the whole cold chain unless they've got validation they want validation validation is that every step's been verified of course it's possible and of course dare i say it again i've said it a thousand times mcdonald's do it every day day in day out what's the what are the some of the technologies that manage that market um they have the will they insist on um sophisticated telematic systems greg using product probes and air temperature probes right from right from the manufacture point so the food producer starts right the food producer and finishes at the mcdonald's store absolutely 100 great um have another question and sorry everybody i am trying to group these questions in order but my notes are getting a bit scattered as i go through they're all good questions i don't miss anyone uh you talked a couple of times about a cold chain audit what is one and what goes on with one uh cold chain order usually occurs when when there's the same problem occurs more than one or two once or twice in a supply channel so often we will get called in to find out what's going wrong it could be one loading dock it could be one storage facility it could be one transporter or a series of transporters where a food generally a food owner is getting product at the end and it's not at the right temperature so we see it a lot in australia a food owner says look i've just got this meat it's seven or eight degrees who's at fault and then they go up the chain and no one there's not enough information and data there's not been a there's been no cooperation up the supply chain cold chain to identify where where the temperature issue occurred um so that's usually generally when we've been called in i'm not on my own there's lots of lots of experts in australia that get called in to do that sort of work and what do you do in an audit we do do what we call a walk through greg we travel with a product basically so um we go back to the beginning of a cold chain measure and verify um and then allow the and obviously we encourage all the stakeholders to do what they normally do and we just follow it we follow the truck and a car and we get to the loading dock and then we watch the procedures and watch the unloading and then wait for it to be reloaded into another truck and then we follow that truck and then we go to the storage facility where it's unloaded and we check their loading dock and look at their refrigeration and look at their air temperatures and [Music] um because it's not always in the trucks okay everyone blames it everyone blames the trucks greg it's not always the trucks it's often often not on the track look um i noticed that we've started to lose participants because we're running long uh and i apologize let me just ask a couple of final questions that i'm going to hand over so i'll ask you two questions to go now i'm looking through um i'm not going to get to all of the questions and i apologize for that uh i've tried to to get through as many as i can so apologies if your question isn't asked um we've got quite a lot two final questions and i'll ask them together mark one is are there any recent technological advancements in insulated packaging that are you find particularly interesting and in terms of insulation and so it's two insulation questions uh have you thought about climate change and how that may change the insulation requirements both for packaging but also for uh trailers and and the various uh infrastructure uh that we need oh definitely great well definitely climate change is um you know it's close to your heart and my heart and it's all and we are definitely looking at emissions from from now the question is have we looked at the change as temperatures change changed have we started mapping what the new k values that will be required are yes now that's as i'm saying that all has to be looked at greg so so from a regulatory compliance point of view um all those things need to be tighter than what they already are to make all our assets and all our equipment better than what they are today so that we don't put as much co2 in the atmosphere that's that's number one number two packaging nothing look all i know is there's some wonderful work going on and i'll probably defer to pierre to do that next week but some fantastic technology going on in packaging um i was talking to narrator and pierre after what during one of the conferences um uh last month and yeah there's some great work being done on wall uh packaging for food based on wool uh here in australia and there's a company in sydney doing that i thought that was particularly um interesting um and uh yeah and lots of others there is definitely a lot going on in packaging yeah look well i i think with that and thanks very much for the presentation mark and answering all those questions uh but with that i might quickly pass over for you to pierre um to um wrap up and talk about what's going to happen next week uh so over to you here well fantastic uh thank you very much uh green and and mark uh so my name is pierpina i'm the education director for the australian institute of packaging so i'll be on on deck next week along with a colleague of mine george and kansen munna from innovation from opal he's the innovation manager there uh i think i just want to cover off a couple of areas just to uh with the appetite on what we will be talking about next week we're looking at the primary the secondary and the tertiary packaging packaging is integral uh and i'm sure you picked that up from mark's presentation so you know everything around the food preservation and spawn introduction is related to packaging in a large large way and and we need to understand those challenges that are facing the whole supply chain and i'll be interesting that we'll also focus on a few of the design elements and i'm sure many of you will find this fascinating um design elements in how you reduce food spoilage or food bearing waste mind we waste 35 percent of the food around the world we'll look at the uh containment and compression strength of packaging uh uh primary secondary tertiary we'll understand the supply chains from a design perspective and we'll make sure that you understand them we look some of the materials that we've been using for for this packaging and then as mark correctly mentioned we will address airflow and aeration around wrapping packing stacking uh and and racking so uh that is very applicable to probably all the listeners so if you come along and certainly we will find the optimum backing uh configurations and stack options uh and i'll wait for it we will offer a few little tips uh on dollar reduction uh in food and and waste from a food and waste perspective as long as along with the environmental impacts that invariably happen when it comes to packaging so next week um uh come along and this is on the 11th same time and come and see how packaging can contribute to reducing food waste next week i will touch on what is being presented the following week so uh if you come next week only then when i tell you what happens on the 17th so see you next week bye bye thank you all for mark and greg for that excellent presentation and i hope you all gained a valuable insight into some cold chain issues and what we need to do about it and i look forward to you all joining us next week to hear about the what packaging plays in in the cold chain and further the week after that we'll be looking at what people have actually done in packaging uh to help the coal chain thank you very much with some contact details there if you need to get in contact with us but look forward to catching you all next week thank you

2021-04-18 15:35

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