Block Chain to Monitor Cold Storage Food Supplies

According to an estimate, 88% of the global cold storage revenues comes from food supplies, out of which 50% is wasted in transit due to temperature fluctuations, carelessness of cold fleet divers, taking more than stipulated time to deliver consignment. The shelf life of the food item degrades drastically before it reaches the shelf on store.

Buyers have become skeptical regarding the quality of the food items they buy, pertaining to increasing cases of substandard food products and demand transparency on the origin, sourcing, processing and transportation details.

In the current context, buyer is not able to look beyond what is available on shelf and expiry date mentioned on food items. A buyer is not able to track if the food item they intend to buy experienced temperature fluctuations while it was in transit or whether it is still edible.

Cold Storage food supplies is estimated to increase following coming of MNC food joints and change in food habits. A noticeable shift is observed in consumption pattern inclined towards cold storage food items.

Transparency and fast last mile delivery have become crucial to win buyers confidence and remain competitive.

Block Chain technology can bring in the much needed transparency by assigning a unique digital identity to every product in transit and keep on updating real time information over block chain related to the particular product.

What information can block chain contain?

• Tracking for Buyers
  • Temperature throughout transit, Shelf number, number of units on each shelf, estimated delivery, real time location, delivery time revisions based on distance covered analytics, halts and traffic
• Optimizing for Transporters
  • Optimal route suggestions based on past journeys, re-routing suggestions in case of traffic congestion
• Analytics
  • Time taken versus Benchmark time
  • Number of times temperature went down desired limit
  • Revised expiration date

The recording of information on block chain can easily be broadcasted to stakeholders anytime and anywhere. This will not only help win confidence of stakeholders but also bring in supply chain discipline as each and every activity gets tracked which cannot be tampered or deleted. It can build a whole repository that can enable SCM auditing and analytics to look into improvement areas, evaluate each and every element responsible for processing till delivery