A facility usually keeps its temperature record in two places: in the cold room and on the vehicle. The stretch in between - picking, waiting, loading - is usually unrecorded, and most of the loss happens there.
Three bottlenecks in the centre
- Picking: the pallet leaves the cold room and stays exposed for as long as the picking takes.
- Waiting in dispatch: in most facilities that area is not at store temperature.
- Loading: the door stays open for a long stretch and the body fills with outside air.
The container collapses the chain into one step
The order is picked straight into a prepared container. From the moment the lid closes the environment around the goods is fixed: whether it waits in dispatch or the loading drags on, the cold is inside the box. How long loading takes becomes a question of planning rather than of the cold chain.
Overnight preparation
Plates freeze overnight on the racks; the energy is spent at the facility, on a fixed tariff. In the morning the containers stand ready to their regimes. This moves the production of cold off the route and into the depot - a plate drawing power at night instead of a unit burning fuel on the road.
Cross-dock and transfer
At a transfer centre the load changes vehicle. With a closed container the transfer is done without opening the goods at all: the container comes off one vehicle and goes onto another. The time it takes falls outside the chain.
Working out how many containers
The cycle has three parts: containers in the field, containers coming back and containers being prepared at the depot. Once the number of daily runs and the turnaround time are known, the count follows; the number of plates is planned from the overnight freezing capacity.
How it is set up
Send us your daily dispatch volume, the number of branches and the turnaround time, and we will work out the number of containers and plates and the freezing rack capacity you need.
