This week the 15th edition of Cool Logistics Global is taking place in the Italian port city of Genoa with a full program of industry speakers.
Lorenzo Donato - Etihad Cargo
Tuesday's afternoon session opened with a presentation from Lorenzo Donato from Etihad Cargo which specialises in air freight and this year has opened a new destination each month of this year. In 2022 the airline carried 40,000 tons of fresh produce around the world.
Ted Prince - Tri-Cities Intermodal
Ted Prince from Tri-Cities Intermodal hopes to eliminate numerous supply chain issues in the United States by taking trucks off the highways and on a tri-city rail network with Wallula at it centre. The end destinations are Spokeane, Pocatello, Millersburg and Seattle and Tacoma
Bruno Fusciani
Bruno Fusciani, formerly of Thermo King is now a coach and specialises in Cold Chain Equipment Management. Bruno said that better management of the cold chain was needed to reduce both food waste and water waste, the world faces a global food crisis within the next two years while 30% of food is wasted, he said 12% of this was down to lack of refrigeration. This problem could be reduced by better temperature monitoring and control as well as early implementation of the cold chain at harvest.
Inigo Alonso - Arctic Sea
Inigo Alonso, CEO of Arctic Sea said that real time monitoring in the supply chain is growing. This will reduce product loss and costs while ensuring compliance and giving exporters the ability to reach new markets. The company produces real time data loggers while measure temperature, shock and humidity, enabling a fast response to prevent cost and impact reduction.
Mark Evrard - BFV-Truval
Mark Evrard from BFV-Truval was the last speaker of the day. He spoke about his company's progress and the challenges faced in shipping Belgian pears to over-seas markets. The company shipped 2000 tonnes of pears last year from Antwerp and Rotterdam. He said the goals were to keep growers on board and use just in time management to supply both local and worldwide customers.
The last few years have been challenging in terms of both growing and shipping reliability, but the industry is now moving to a better shipping performance with less delays.
Chris Catto-Smith - FreshPort Asia
Thursday's session opened with an inspiring presentation from Chris Catto-Smith from FreshPort Asia. Chris had been working for a big corporation in the retail industry in Asia, but said had an epiphany and turned his hand to helping small farmers in the Mekong in Vietnam who were being exploited by big corporations. He used his savings to invest the project. Chris ended up stuck in Vietnam for 10 months when Covid struck and has helped farmers to understand and achieve good growing practices and gain the necessary certifications to get their quality products to the markets. The company, BioFruit is now worth 8 million dollars and consists of 350 growers. Products include pink pomelo and un-waxed limes.
Estelle Linget - ESL Consulting
Estelle Linget founder of ESL Consulting and senior advisor for transport & logistics at Roland Berger spoke about the need for digitalisation in the industry, she said it is now a necessity. Shippers need transparency and end to end visibility, the supply chain needs resilience to enable fast decision making and shippers need to supply accurate ETAs of vessels. She said that nowadays there are so many opportunities to work with star-ups on developing the technology.
Leo Lukasse - Wageningen UP
Leo Lukasse a specialist in climate control at Wageningen UP Food and Biobased Research spoke about his team's research on developing a Digital Twin. This is a digital representation of a physical object or in this case fruit.
He said there is currently a huge wave of AI optimism but this can't just be fed on historical data, it also needs real time data. The question is how do we interpret this information?
Example of using real time data in the cold chain are looking at a refrigeration unit, is it still performing how it should be and is it in an optimal state? Could a digital twin predict what the quality of the fruit inside the container would be on arrival? This information could be used to make decisions before the container arrives at its destination. This is done using generic models which take information on the original condition of the fruit, respiration and transpiration during transit. There are of course challenges, how has the fruit been packed, will different materials have an influence? There are still many factors to be considered.
James Caldwell - Mara Advisors
James Caldwell a consultant at Mara Advisors continued the theme of a need for more real time data. He said the existing limitations were that tracking and monitoring were limited to a the reefer unit, there was no broader visibility or predictive data in end to end journeys. Also the data is owned by the asset owner. Meanwhile the supply chain is becoming increasingly volatile due to climatic events, political situations and of course the pandemic.
He said that with 500 start-ups in the maritime and ports industry there was a great opportunity to create ecosystems with greater flexibility and technology, but this requires data sharing and collaboration.