ISO 23412:2020 defines the delivery service for refrigerated parcels moving by land with intermediate transfer. It covers every stage from collecting the parcel from the sender to its arrival, including transfers between vehicles and containers, and sets requirements for facilities, vehicles, cold stores and staff. The standard looks at the courier's service; it does not cover the quality of the goods inside or the measurement of their temperature.
What falls outside the scope matters to a recipient too: air, sea and rail transport, direct delivery without transfer, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and parcels that carry their own ice packs in sealed insulated packaging. The last group may still travel through a refrigerated service, but the standard's service requirements were not written for it.
If a courier refers to the standard, ask which goods and temperature class it accepts, how transfer points are controlled, whether temperature records are kept and open to you, who is told of a deviation, where an undelivered parcel goes and how handover to the recipient is recorded.
File the courier's written service scope, the parcel ID, the delivery window and the route to incident records. If you use your own packaging, measure the parcel's internal temperature independently of the courier network, with a trial on the real route and a logger.
