ATLANTA, GA – Intelleflex Corporation, a leader in On-demand Data Visibility for the fresh produce cold chain, has announced The Intelleflex Cool Chain Quick Scan™ — a program that enables growers, packers, shippers and distributors to discover temperature variations in their cold chains that can impact the quality and freshness of delivered produce. Produce waste due to temperature management issues in the cold supply chain is a significant problem, contributing to $35 billion in losses annually around the world1. While growers, packers, shippers, distributors and retailers are all committed to providing fresh, high-quality produce, most assume the produce is good right up to the point of failure and are surprised by the amount of spoilage. The Intelleflex Cool Chain Quick Scan eliminates guesswork associated with visual inspections and First In, First Out inventory and proves that each member of the fresh produce cold chain can monitor the freshness of their produce and use this knowledge to reduce shrink and improve profitability and delivered freshness.
The time at various temperatures fresh produce experiences from harvest to when it is cooled, processed and shipped varies hour-to-hour and grower-to-grower. As a result, each pallet of produce has a unique shelf life. Furthermore, air temperatures of refrigerated storage and transport vehicles may vary significantly and do not accurately reflect the actual temperature or freshness of the product, causing the product to be "shipped blind" and potentially to expire before it reaches the retailer or customer. The Intelleflex Cool Chain Quick Scan Program addresses these issues in a fast, cost-effective manner and provides documented results and recommendations.
The Intelleflex Cool Chain Quick Scan Program provides a snapshot of your existing cold chain that helps to quickly and easily identify, measure and document the impact of temperature on fresh produce as it moves from the field, to the pack house, into distribution, and all the way to the retailer. Participants in the Quick Scan Program receive 12 Intelleflex TMT-8500 temperature monitoring tags along with instructions and return packaging. Participants can simply place the tags with their produce — one tag per pallet load is recommended — and process the pallets as they normally would.
For example, tags could be placed with produce in the field at the time of harvest, or in pallets being transported from the pack house to distribution centers. The participants then remove the tags at the pack house or distribution center and mail them back to Intelleflex for analysis. Intelleflex, in conjunction with Innovative Fresh, a leading fresh produce consultancy, evaluates the data and provides an analysis of the temperature variations and their impact on the product's shelf-life, freshness and quality, as derived from the sample data. The report can serve as a foundation for improving cold chain operations. The cost of the program is $995.
"Until very recently, technology to monitor perishables throughout the cold chain was either too expensive or too difficult to deploy at the pallet- or case-level," said Peter Mehring, CEO of Intelleflex. "That limited solutions to checking refrigeration compliance, rather than monitoring product freshness. Intelleflex temperature tags combine the ease of wirelessly reading core pallet temperatures, critical to calculating current freshness, with wireless temperature monitors that are priced for pallet-level deployments. For the first time, these combined features deliver a solution that enables fresh produce owners to optimize their cold supply chain management based on actionable product freshness data."
Intelleflex readers and condition monitoring tags use industry-standard battery-assisted passive RFID to provide superior performance — including the ability to read through pallets and containers — with cost-effective reliability.
"Producers and consumers are focused on the quality, taste and appearance of produce, the condition of which directly relates to the temperature history of the product throughout the cold chain," said Jelger de Vriend, Managing Director at Innovative Fresh. "With our analysis of their cold chains, growers, packers and shippers can make informed decisions that will have an immediate, positive impact on delivered quality, often without having to make a single costly or time-consuming change to cold chain processes."
Intelleflex has completed a number of case studies and, based on tens of thousands of data points, identified previously undocumented product temperature variations — as much as 30 percent difference between pallet and ambient air temperature in a single refrigerated trailer. Several case study projects produced data revealing how pallet-level temperature monitoring could reduce shrink and improve delivered freshness by providing actionable data. Notable findings of the studies include:
· Significant Variation in Harvest-to-Precool Time: The pallet temperature and length of time spent prior to pre-cool varied significantly by pallet, resulting in an opportunity to significantly improve the tracking of remaining shelf life. Knowing the temperature history of each pallet is the first step in avoiding unintended loss and improving delivered freshness.
· Ambient Temperature Monitoring Is Inadequate: The air temperature outside the pallet (ambient temperature, not product temperature) did not reliably correlate to the temperature inside the pallet and therefore did not provide an accurate indication of product condition. In fact, pallet-to-pallet shelf life loss varied by as much as 40 percent within a single refrigerated trailer in-transit from Mexico to California, as proven in a recently published case study.
· FEFO+ Maximizes Post-harvest Yield: Pallet-level temperature data delivers the ability to implement enhanced First Expired, First Out (FEFO+) inventory management by which growers, packers and shippers can aggregate pallets based on each pallet's unique remaining shelf life and dynamically route them to the most appropriate destination to ensure maximum freshness.
· Single-Season Payback: Studies revealed the cost per case for temperature monitoring from growers to distribution centers to be less than two cents. The same case study further revealed a payback period — calculated according to the value of the perishables and the cost of the Intelleflex XC3 Technology™ RFID readers and tags and software — of less than one growing season, based on demonstrated reduced shrink.
Companies interested in The Intelleflex Cool Chain Quick Scan should contact Harry Kuo athkuo@intelleflex.com or call 1-408-200-6524. The program is available for qualified customers through the end of 2011. A summary of the referenced case study can be found here;http://info.intelleflex.com/CaseStudyPalletLevelTempMonitoring.html. Additional information about Intelleflex solutions for the fresh produce industry can be found here;http://www.intelleflex.com/Solutions.Perishables.asp. A Fresh Produce Cold Chain Temperature Monitor Comparison Chart can be found here;http://info.intelleflex.com/ProduceComparisonChart.html.
1http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/11/food-packaging-innovation_cz_sh_0512feat_ls.html
About Innovative Fresh
Innovative Fresh provides market intelligence to leaders in the retail and fresh produce world. Our partners have the ambition to better understand their consumers, to further increase control over their products, and to expand their market leadership. We deliver transparent and independent control over the fresh produce category and help our partners to make daily improvements, to select the right varieties and origins, to continuously innovate their products, and to stay ahead of the competition. We run consumer panels, continuously monitor the quality of your fresh produce, developing extensive insight of your consumer and, with our partners, run programs in eight countries.http://innovativefresh.com/
About Intelleflex
Intelleflex® provides on-demand, data visibility solutions for cold chain and asset management. Its industry-leading XC3 Technology™ RFID products enable a range of solutions for perishable food and pharmaceutical temperature monitoring, asset tracking, personnel monitoring, retail, healthcare and other applications. These real-time monitoring solutions can help organizations reduce shrink or loss, more closely track and manage assets, reduce cost of operations, and increase profitability. For more information, visitwww.intelleflex.com.
Source: Intelleflex