What is the Cold Chain
The cold chain is a vital part of modern logistics. It is a process to ensure that temperature-sensitive products, such as food and pharmaceuticals, remain safe, stable, and effective throughout their production, storage, and delivery. It involves a continuous sequence of temperature-controlled processes and specialized equipment designed to maintain product integrity from origin to end use.
The Importance of the Cold Chain
Multiple industries rely on proper procedures. In the food and beverage sector, the cold chain preserves freshness and nutritional value in perishable items such as dairy, meat, produce, and frozen goods. In healthcare, it safeguards the potency of vaccines, biologics, and temperature-sensitive medications. The chemical industry also relies on the cold chain to ensure quality control for sensitive materials that degrade with temperature fluctuations.
Key Components
A successful cold chain consists of four major stages:
Low Temperature Refrigeration Compressors: Keeping Your Cold Chain Safe
Challenge: A leading global food retailer faced rising maintenance costs and inefficiencies due to reactive refrigeration management. Frequent alarms, unnecessary service calls and inconsistent performance across stores led to increased expenses, waste and challenges in maintaining food quality.
Solution: Copeland’s enhanced Connect+ platform with the Facility Health Score Insights tool leveraged machine learning to monitor refrigeration performance. This provided actionable data, reduced nuisance alarms and streamlined operations. A two-month trial cut service costs by 33% and improved reliability.
Challenge: Walgreens set out to modernize its existing CO2 booster system after a decade of service. With the goal of continuing its investments in onsite renewable energy resources, the team designed an updated CO2 booster system engineered with the latest technologies and sustainable design principles.
Solution: Designed with heat reclaim and geothermal capabilities, Copeland implemented a CO2 booster system upgrade that leveraged our end-to-end expertise. This provided sustainable refrigeration solutions and integrated with the HVAC system to provide heating and cooling and improve year-round efficiencies.
Challenge: The processing industry requires precise temperature control to ensure food safety and quality. A Foshan-based company needed a reliable, energy-efficient system to flash-freeze 36 tons of processed meat daily, from room temperature to -18°C, while meeting rising energy-efficiency standards.
Solution: Guangzhou Fusheng Refrigeration used Copeland ZFI low-temperature scroll racks for the facility’s cold storage. Since its launch, the system has delivered outstanding freezing performance, enhanced food quality and surpassed energy-saving goals, exceeding expectations.
Challenge: Korboo, a Belgian gourmet cheese store, needed a sustainable and efficient refrigeration system for its 200-square-meter bistro. The system had to support cooling, ripening and storing over 200 cheese varieties while addressing space limits, energy use and sustainability goals.
Solution: Copeland’s CO2 scroll refrigeration unit, designed for medium-temperature applications, offered energy efficiency and reliability. Its modular design and plug-and-play installation simplified setup, even in tight spaces, ensuring the project stayed on schedule.
Challenge: FBD, a leading frozen beverage dispenser manufacturer, evaluated its lower-GWP refrigerant strategy to support new product development. They needed a plan that minimized design cycles, ensured compliance and addressed next-gen refrigerant complexities amid evolving regulations and customer needs.
Solution: FBD partnered with Copeland to align compressor platforms with low-GWP refrigerants, selecting the scroll compressor for R-290 prototypes. This enabled FBD to adopt a new refrigerant strategy that offered a balanced and flexible solution.
Challenge: An agriculture cooperative required cold room refrigeration systems that balanced reliable temperature control with greater energy efficiency. Traditional semi-hermetic units fell short of meeting their sustainability and cost-saving goals, prompting the need for a more advanced solution.
Solution: Copeland partnered with Arneg Korea to install newly engineered medium-temperature, variable-speed condensing units that deliver 20% energy savings based on seasonal performance.
