2 Perishable-Shipping Solutions Providing In-Transit Temperature & Location Visibility

As a food and beverage shipper, you have no choice: to remain competitive in the global marketplace, you must have a perishable-shipping solution that enables you to actively monitor the in-transit temperature and location of shipments. That may be enough when moving certain perishable commodities.

However, shipping perishable food often requires tracking more than location and temperature; you must also closely monitor humidity, light exposure, and shock events.

In either case, you need complete visibility—from one end of the supply chain to the other. This is the only way to reduce excursions and assure stakeholders that steps have been taken to safeguard product quality throughout the journey—ending with on-time and in-full deliveries.

Unfortunately, many logistics professionals lack the insight into their cold chain necessary to perform these actions—which is why they increasingly turn to partners who can provide perishable-shipping solutions with the technology-driven visibility needed to succeed.

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When it comes to the best way to ship perishable food, you do have choices. This article provides a close look at the importance of temperature-tracking perishable shipments, the unique challenges facing food and beverage shippers, and how Tive’s industry-leading technology powers in-transit temperature and location visibility—to help food shippers save perishable shipments.

Shipping Perishables: A Fruitful Market… & a Potentially Vast Wasteland

As the world population increases, so does its insatiable appetite for fresh, convenient, and packaged food and beverage products. That also means growing demand in the perishable goods transportation industry, a global market expected to grow by $6.43 billion from 2021 to 2026, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.22%.

Shippers with a solid perishable-shipping solution will be better positioned to grab a bigger piece of that financial pie. A foundation for this, as pointed out by S&P Market Intelligence, is advanced logistics capabilities (i.e., real-time tracking of location and temperature) designed to ensure the end-market availability of fruits and other perishables within a short period in fresh condition—whether shipped by any combination of air, rail, ship, or truck.

Let’s use fruit as an example because nearly every country produces and exports fresh fruit in various volumes. Intercontinental trade of fruit relies primarily on refrigerated containers, a cheaper alternative to air freight but a more time-consuming process nonetheless.

According to data from IHS Markit Global Trade Data Analytics Suite (GTAS), the world’s leading exporters of fresh fruit are Spain (7.79 million MT), Ecuador (7.45 million MT), and the United States (5.38 million MT). Mainland China is the leading importer, with 9.52 million MT.

That level of trade demands that shippers have the ability to follow ship movements and monitor container port performance to assure stakeholders they’ve tracked their cargo’s location and temperature—to prove cold chain custody and product quality throughout the journey.

An inability to do that leads to tremendous waste. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates the global volume of food waste for 2022 will be 1.3 billion tons—30-40% of the total global food supply.  

Perishable Food Shippers Face Many Unique Challenges

As a shipper, freight forwarder, or third-party logistics provider (3PL), you already navigate a global supply chain fraught with constant disruptions, port congestion, labor shortages, and relentlessly rising customer demands for timely deliveries.

However, the pressure is even higher when shipping perishable food—which requires constant temperature tracking and condition monitoring to ensure cold chain custody from the point of origin to final delivery. This, in turn, adds many challenges to an already-full plate:

• Lack of Visibility: You must know the location of products at all times—otherwise, you will have limited insight into your cold chain.
• High Risk of Waste: You need to mitigate food spoilage and waste from temperature and humidity excursions.
• High Quality is a Top Priority: You must maintain the quality of perishable food shipments—throughout the supply chain journey—to lessen the likelihood of rejected loads.
• Inventory Management: Given the limited shelf life of most perishable food products, you must move efficiently to restock such products more frequently—in a highly controlled manner.
• Stakeholders Demand Actionable Insight: Without aggregated shipment data, you will be unable to provide assurance of cold chain integrity, and might hamper your ability to deliver on time and in full.
• Increasingly Stringent Compliance: You need help meeting the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requirement of 12 months of stored temperature data.
• Complex Insurance Claims: If damage occurs, you need detailed information to establish cold chain custody for insurance claims.
• Growing Demand for Sustainability: Reducing food waste will also support your sustainability initiatives.

The Importance of Temperature Tracking Perishable Foods

Given the challenges mentioned, you need a perishable-shipping solution that provides unparalleled visibility combined with constant temperature and condition tracking. After all, no retail grocer will accept a $300,000 shipment of frozen fish that arrives half-thawed or a $20,000 load of organic blueberries covered with mold due to excessive moisture.

Those are just two examples, but there are endless others. Fresh or frozen meat, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, eggs, coffee, bakery, and confectionary items must remain within strict temperature ranges to maintain top quality—and to ensure they are safe for human consumption. Any excursion beyond acceptable temperatures increases the risk of foodborne illnesses and subsequent legal liabilities.

This is why retailers, grocers, and restaurateurs closely inspect shipments upon arrival and will not hesitate to reject any load that shows outward signs of quality degradation. But passing the eye test is just half the battle. Receivers also need assurances that shipments stayed within acceptable temperature and condition ranges *throughout* the supply chain journey. Therefore, anyone with a role in perishable food shipping must be able to produce a documented record of unbroken cold chain custody.

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Tive, a leading provider of cold chain management solutions for the food and beverage industry, understands the importance of tracking temperatures—and monitoring the condition of perishable shipments. The company offers shippers two robust perishable-shipping solutions: easy-to-use temperature data loggers and real-time trackers.

Top Perishable-Shipping Solutions Powered by In-Transit Temperature & Location Visibility

If you need location temperature visibility, Tive Tag is the most cost-effective, easiest-to-use temperature logger available for end-to-end cold chain monitoring of temperature-sensitive food shipments.

If you need end-to-end, real-time tracking of the location, temperature, and condition of food shipments, Tive’s flagship visibility solution includes the hyper-accurate, multi-sensor Solo 5G trackers that capture and transmit shipment location and condition data in real time.

Let’s look closer at each of these perishable-shipping solutions. 

Tive Tag: Cost-Effective, Easy-to-Use Data Loggers

Tive Tag is a reusable, paper-thin temperature logger in the form of a flexible shipping label—priced at half the cost of traditional data loggers. Tive Tag helps food and beverage shippers capture and store the temperature data of their shipments. Unlike other temperature loggers on the market, Tive Tag provides an affordable, easy-to-use solution to capture and store the temperature data of food shipments throughout your cold chain.

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Tive Tag Benefits

• Use your phone (iPhone or Android) to start and log the temperature data of food shipments—simply stick, tap with your phone, and ship.
• Tive Tags are water- and dust-proof, easily affix to shipments, and complete shipment data is quickly uploaded into a cloud platform via a mobile phone.
• Tive Tags can be reused on individual shipments over and over again—for more than a year.
• Easily maintain a cold chain audit trail that will help serve your compliance and insurance claims needs.
• The Tag contains no lithium batteries or other hazardous materials, which supports sustainability and green initiatives.

Tive Solo 5G Trackers: Hardware & Software Capture Real-Time Data from End to End

Hyper-accurate, multi-sensor Solo 5G trackers capture and transmit shipment location—as well as temperature, humidity, light exposure, and shock events data—in real time. A cloud-based application aggregates your shipping data, giving you a complete 360° view and delivering real-time, actionable alerts—enabling you to take immediate action to minimize product damage.

Solo 5G Tracker Benefits

• Actively monitor real-time temperature, humidity, light, and location data
• Minimize temperature excursions, reduce product damage, spoilage, and waste
• Real-time, actionable alerts enable you to take immediate action when deviations occur
• Reduce the likelihood of rejected loads
• Hyper-accurate location monitoring using cellular, WiFi, and GPS provides global coverage in 186 countries
• The world’s first non-lithium tracker is approved by 130+ air carriers
• Available for single or multi-use, with long battery life
• Establish custody for insurance claims with actionable insights from reporting and analytics

Cloud-based Application Benefits

• Real-time visibility into location and condition data, including multimodal shipments (land, ocean, air, rail)
• Set product-specific configurable alerts at any point during the journey to specify condition ranges relevant to your temperature and humidity-sensitive perishable shipments—and receive notifications when excursions get detected
• Reports and analytics provide actionable insights to improve operations, such as carriers with the best on-time deliveries and the least number of temperature excursions—which also assists with damage claims
• Provides an intuitive, easy-to-use customer experience
• Seamlessly integrates with the platform of your choice (WMS, ERP, TMS, CRM, and more) using the Tive API or webhooks to synchronize shipment location and condition data

24/7 Live Monitoring (Optional Premium Service)

• Tive’s team of logistics experts can monitor shipments around the clock—and actively intervene to save your food products

Visibility in Action: Shipment Loss? Perish the Thought.

Many of the world’s leading companies rely on Tive’s visibility solutions to track the location, temperature, and condition of their global shipments. Here are a few examples of food shipping companies that leverage Tive’s robust tracking capabilities.

• OBE Organics: Australia’s first and oldest organic beef exporter relies on Tive’s real-time solution to get unparalleled visibility into its supply chain—resulting in fewer claims and rejected loads, improved risk management and decision making, and speedy resolution of border and custom claims. Read the complete case study.
• Alpine Fresh: ​​This U.S.-based importer of fresh fruits and vegetables from Latin America has achieved record growth, thanks partly to a strong partnership with Tive. By using a Solo 5G tracker on all its shipments, the company saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by reducing cargo loss and truck claims. Read the complete case study.
• Coffee Importer: Shipping raw, high-end coffee beans worldwide by truck and ship, this company uses Tive to monitor products during transit. With access to real-time data, the supply chain manager can predict when a shipment has been damaged en route, providing time to order a replacement shipment—or notify the end customer that the product may be damaged or delayed. Read the complete case study.

Tive is the Clear Choice for Protecting Perishable Shipments

When selecting a perishable-shipping solution, there are several important considerations:

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• What commodities are you shipping?
• How sensitive are they to temperature or humidity?
• What mode of transportation are you using?
• How many shipments do you have per month?

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Your answers will help determine whether temperature loggers alone will suffice—or if you need end-to-end, real-time tracking of location, temperature, and conditions.

You now understand how Tive Tag and our hyper-accurate Solo 5G trackers help food and beverage shippers actively manage perishable food shipments. To discuss how these perishable-shipping solutions can help you reduce excursions, assure product quality, and improve on-time and in-full deliveries, contact us today.