Cold chain technologies are vital for keeping perishable foods, pharmaceuticals, and other temperature-sensitive goods at safe temperatures as they move through the supply chain. If you’re shipping temperature-sensitive goods or perishable foods through the mail, you need to carefully manage the integrity of your cold chain so you can guarantee that customers will be happy with the goods they ultimately receive.
Strong cold chain management can do a lot for your company. It can keep your products within a safe temperature range, so they don’t sustain freezing or overheating damage. And it may be essential for keeping your customers safe from eating or using freeze- or heat-damaged products. Let’s take a closer look at how appropriate cold chain management can benefit your business.
Keep Your Products within a Safe Temperature Range
The whole point of using cold chain technologies is to keep temperature-sensitive products within a safe temperature range as they move through the cold supply chain. Plenty of things, like baked goods, fresh produce, and other perishable foods, can’t be allowed to get too hot. Just as many things can’t be allowed to get too cold, either (and sometimes they’re the same things).
If you’re shipping perishable goods, managing your cold chain well will ensure that they stay fresh and in good condition all the way to your customer, whether you ship directly to customers or ship your goods to retailers. Cold chain technologies minimize waste and prevent spoilage, and they can also help you meet the food safety regulatory requirements around shipping perishable foods. If you’re not shipping perishable foods, but something else that’s sensitive to temperature extremes, cold chain technologies are still an important tool to protect your goods.
Protect Your Products from Freezing and Overheating Damage
In the winter, you have to worry about your goods freezing in transit, but in the summer, you have to worry about them overheating. Cold chain management can successfully help you avoid both.
You probably don’t think about using refrigerated trucks to keep shipments from freezing in the winter, but the fact of the matter is that refrigerated trucks can definitely keep your shipments above freezing. They’ll keep them cool – usually within a 35- to 48-degree Fahrenheit range – but they won’t let them get cold enough to freeze. And lots of things can sustain freezing damage that you wouldn’t expect, like coffee, electronics, and cosmetics.
Successful cold chain management can also protect your shipments from overheating in the summer, and that’s vital to the safety of the food supply chain as well as to the quality of your other products that can’t be allowed to overheat. Heat-sensitive items like live plants and animals, perishable foods, beverages, batteries, and electronics can be shipped with gel packs or other cold chain technologies to protect them from melting or other overheating damage.
Safeguard Your Customers from Freeze- or Heat-Damaged Products
The last thing you need is for heat- or freeze-damaged products to arrive on a customer’s doorstep. Customers will switch to another brand or retailer if they’re not happy with the quality of the items they received. They might also leave poor reviews of your products, shipping practices, or company online.
Of course, you can’t always tell if an item has been exposed to temperature extremes in transit. That’s why temperature indicators can be one of the most important cold chain technologies at your disposal. Protecting your customers from freeze- and heat-damaged products isn’t just about keeping them happy so they keep buying your products and don’t complain. It’s also about protecting them from foodborne illness or from injury should their products fail due to freeze or heat damage.
You don’t need your customers getting sick because they ate something that was allowed to overheat at one point in transit, and then was cooled back down (or not). Not only could you put a customer’s life and health at risk by not using appropriate cold chain technologies, you could break food safety regulations and risk your company’s reputation. Protect your customers and your company’s reputation by using the best cold chain technologies at your disposal to manage your cold chain shipping.
Successful cold chain management is the key to getting your temperature-sensitive items shipped out to customers in a timely fashion, and keeping those customers healthy and happy with your services. Cold chain technologies today are more sophisticated than ever, so take advantage of them to keep your shipments cool and in good condition.
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