Page 15 - Climate Control News Magazine December-January 2022

CCN Live
Aiming for world’s best practice
GETTING THE BASICS RIGHT
When it comes to cold chain optimisation, Australia doesn’t even have the basics in place.
Stop Food Waste chief operating officer, Steve Barthel, said it is hard to believe there is no standard or regulation around insulation in the cold chain yet the National Construction Code (NCC) specifies insulation for everything else.
“Impede air flow and temperatures will vary and humidity will build up. One area where Australia is seriously lacking is in some of the basics like having standardised width of trucks and pallet sizes,” he said.
“The rest of the world has 2.6 metre pallets, we use 2.5 metres which leads to overloading, reduced airflow and problems. I find this situation staggering.
“We haven’t got the basics right and the challenges are bigger here because we are dealing with the tyranny of distance.
“Fresh food in Australia spends more than half its life in transit. Up to 60 per cent of cold chain failures are due to human error, we need more expertise which is why the Australian Food Cold Chain Council (AFCCC) is working on a new code for the industry.”
AFCCC chair, Mark Mitchell.
PEAK COLD CHAIN
body, the Australian Food Cold Chain Council (AFC- CC), is currently rewriting standards and developing a code of practice to im- prove the cold chain.
AFCCC chair, Mark Mitchell, said the council is aiming for world’s best practice.
QMS and have a process in place to do this. There is stacks of technology out there to do this – it just needs to be utilised properly,” Mitchell said.
“Technology has been out there for years. Web portals are sophisticated now, there is plenty of data we just need to use it.”
Mitchell said other issues that are important include packing, stacking and wrapping.
“Airflow is crucial. You could have the best refrigerated system in the world but bad pro- cesses. You need both to be working success- fully,” he said.
‘WE NEED TO RECOGNISE THE COLD CHAIN IS BASICALLY A QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM.”
“As an industry we are working on codes of practice, rewriting some of the standards to de- velop a Cold Food Code.
“Another issue is the need for basic training to be in place like how to use a thermometer, that’s one of the fundamentals.”
Mitchell also referred to a good resource developed by the Department of Agriculture in partnership with Refrigerants Australia to help with the basics.
Mark Barthel
increased 47 per cent in 2020,” Barthel said.
“An Expert Group study found that $43 billion worth of food in Australia is reliant on the cold chain to reach the dinner table. But right now 25 per cent of fresh food and vegeta-
Mitchell described Australia’s cold chain as a unique beast as it has to cover long dis- tances with small populations under very hot conditions.
“It is also very competitive and dynamic,” he said.
Mitchell was speaking at CCN Live 2021 which was sponsored by Refrigerants Australia.
He said the goal is to make the cold chain more compliant and that means getting the right processes in place which is the hardest part.
“We need to start by recognising that the cold chain is basically a Quality Management System (QMS),” he said.
“There are control points for food handling and storage. When there is a handover or change of custody the QMS needs to recognise these control points.
“A compliant cold chain verifies the tempera- tures at each step. If this is done its job done.
“Cold chain practitioners must verify
bles are wasted.
“The good news is that for every $1 invested in
food waste we get $14 back that’s a significant re- turn although the figure is a bit lower in Austral- ia where every dollar invested gets seven to 10 dollars back.”
Barthel said it is important to create chain of cus- tody information to understand why faults and break- downsoccurintransit. Forexample,amangogrown in Katherine will travel 3,500km and pass through 14 logistical partners before it arrives in Melbourne.
“That’s a lot of opportunity for problems so there needs to be a good flow of information,” he said.
“There is an emerging range of technologies to help us such as sensor technologies, AI, machine learning; these tools are starting to be used at scale in Australia.
“Temperature monitoring to track time, tem- perature and location is important along with heat transfer and air flow. We need to get the ba- sics right and that means regular calibration of equipment.”
CLIMATE CONTROL NEWS
DECEMBER 2021-JANUARY 2022
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