US-built box crane - WorldCargo News Online

REEFER INDUSTRY
Keeping fresh food fresh
Although much of the recent focus in the
reefer industry has been on on compressor
design, research has continued in other
areas of technological development.
The provision of controlled or modified
atmosphere (CA or MA) remains an
important add-on feature and both Carrier
and Thermo King offer their own
proven systems to preserve the freshness
of many different commodities. The Carrier
version is known as EverFresh, while
Thermo King provides AFAM+ (Advanced
Fresh Air Management), which is
a microprocessor-driven air exchange system.
The latter has been tested successfully
with over 40 different types of fruit
and vegetable.
One of the best known independent
suppliers of CA (and MA) is TransFRESH
Corp, which, as part of the Performance
Food Group, has been active for almost
40 years and currently protects over
500,000 tonnes of chilled containerised
produce every year. Many tens of thousands
of reefer containers are fitted with
its microprocessor-controlled Tectrol delivery/exit
port and servicing/operational
support is now available at 16 seaports
around the world.
Over a dozen different commodities
are regularly shipped using TransFRESH
CA from the Americas, South East Asia,
Africa and Europe. Amongst recent shipping
line customers is Yang Ming, which
received 1000 x 40ft high cube reefers
fitted with TransFRESH CA capability
in July 2005. The Taiwanese carrier has
worked with TransFRESH since 1996 and
has historically used its system to ship
export produce from California.
Cold chain
world first
In what is claimed to be a world first,
the Adelaide-based national Cold
Chain Centre (CCC) has launched a
new Food Export Logistics Training
(FELT) scheme for all staff in the industry.
The blueprint programme covers
security, food tampering, hydro and
vacuum cooling, packaging atmosphere,
record keeping, Food Act requirements,
and route selection.
CCC chief executive Steve
Houghton said, “Historically the cold
chain business has been too fragmented
and the development of a
whole of industry training programme
has been too difficult to achieve. That
process has been severely hampered by
the fact that there are 81 separate legislative
requirements or industry standards
across the national cold chain industry.”
The nationally-accredited FELT
initiative has a clear mandate: to improve
the safe delivery of fresh produce
“from the farm to the plate” in
Australia, and to overseas markets.
Houghton said the safe delivery of
fresh produce affected the daily lives
of millions of Australians, yet doesn’t
get the attention it deserves from the
majority of the population.
“As an industry we are acutely
aware of the problems associated with
poor food handling,” he said. “There
has been a massive void in the industry
for a programme of this magnitude
for a long time.”
The package is available as hard
copy or on CD and will be outsourced
to nationally-registered training organisations.
The CCC was established by the
South Australian Sea Freight Council
to improve SA’s and Australia’s cold
chain perishable logistics performance
in order to strengthen export competitiveness
in target national and international
markets. The Centre is the
state’s and nation’s best practice solution
provider for all cold chain logistics
problems, providing “virtual” links
to its customers and members around
Australia and in overseas markets, offering
a globally connected service. ❏
TransFRESH is reporting record sales
for 2005, with significant additional shipments
being made from ports in South
America and Africa and many lines in the
process of enlarging or upgrading their
CA capability. “Provisioning containers
with CA has become an attractive option
for those operators wishing to use it
at short notice but which do not necessarily
want to invest in complete installations
at the time the containers are
manufactured,”the company explained.
TransFRESH is carrying out this
provisioning work at many of its servicing
centres around the world, thereby enabling
end-users to rapidly upgrade to CA operation.
The provisioning option only requires
cables and a purging inlet port to
have been installed at the time of machinery
construction, as these are too difficult
to incorporate and seal in the field.
TransFRESH is further offering shipping
lines the option of utilising
remanufactured fan panels, containing the
CA hardware, which obviously saves on
cost. The container operator can choose
to return such equipment to TransFRESH
for complete rebuild, including the replacement
of defective parts and installation
of updated electronics. The renewed
1 High Performance
●Sufficient pull down performance
●Maintains –29°C inside temperature
at high ambient temperature
2 High Reliability
●Anti-corrosion coating
●Trip data protection
-Easy trip data transfer
3 Advanced Dehumidification
●High dehumidification power
-Suitable for transportation of
onion, garlic and flower bulbs
●Low power consumption
4 World Wide Service Network
●13 15 parts depots & 391 327 service agents
●24 hour repair service
(International Area Code +800-4534-4534)
section can subsequently be returned into
the field and fitted into a provisioned unit
within just one hour.
Meanwhile, the company continues to
highlight “the crucial importance of good
post-harvest practices,” which is leading to
an increasing demand for consulting services,
even for products that are not currently
shipped using CA at all. Customers,
in short, are becoming more familiar with
the vital post-harvest steps that have to be
taken before the cargo is stowed prior to
transport and are keen to take advice.
Another company working on a bespoke
CA system is Cargofresh Technologies,
of Germany, which has carried out
further field tests of its existing prototype
during the past year in an effort to
incorporate additional technical enhancements
and reduce production costs.
(14 year History)
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Precise details of the design have not
been released but managing director Peter
Wich says that the basic thinking behind
the system remains unchanged and
it is still being targeted at the perishable
airfreight market.
In addition to controlling the concentration
of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide
and other gases, the membrane-based
Cargofresh CA can also maintain high
humidity within the container, as and
when it is needed.
Cargofresh remains of the opinion that
the uptake of CA by mainstream reefer
operators could be as great as 10 per cent
of the reefer market as a whole once the
concept is wholly proven. This compares
with a current, if increasing, usage rate of
roughly 2-3 per cent by the world’s reefer
container industry. ❏
3-1, Asahi, Nishi biwajima-cho, Kiyosu-City, Aichi Prefecture 452-8561, Japan
Phone : +81-52-503-9312 Fax : +81-52-504-7552 http://mhiks.mhi.co.jp:13081/acrmw/service/
September 2005 51