According to procurement data from the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (ACR) market, the domestic cold chain logistics industry will usher in a new era of high-speed development over the next 15 years.
Cold Chain Makes Food More Nutritious
Yu Feng, Vice President of Asia Pacific for Ingersoll Rand (China) Investment Co., Ltd., explained the importance of the cold chain for food from the perspectives of food safety and nutrition. Yu Feng cited an example: in the 1950s, the number of deaths caused by food safety issues in Japan was as high as 300 per year, whereas it has now dropped to single digits. The primary reason for this decline is Japan's significant investment in the food cold chain industry.
"For every 6°C increase in temperature, the total bacterial count in food doubles, and the shelf life is consequently halved," Yu Feng said. Temperature not only directly affects the storage time of food but also greatly influences its nutritional value. "Experiments show that broccoli preserved through refrigeration retains its nutritional value better and meets nutritional requirements more effectively than broccoli stored at room temperature." Yu Feng believes that as consumers' awareness of food safety and nutrition continues to strengthen, more food will be processed, transported, and stored via cold chain in the future, providing excellent opportunities for the development of China's cold chain logistics industry.
Chen Weixin, director of the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Fruit and Vegetable Preservation, also stated: "The loss rate of room-temperature fruits and vegetables in domestic supermarkets is as high as 20%. Fruits and vegetables transported and stored through the cold chain not only significantly reduce the loss rate but also allow for a higher degree of preservation of their nutritional value."
The Comprehensive Cost of Cold Chain Products is Not High
The fact that cold chain processing increases costs for production enterprises is currently a major resistance to the development of the cold chain market. However, Liu Peijun, chairman of Quick Link (Beijing) Food Logistics Co., Ltd., believes this is a misconception. Liu Peijun explained, "The standardized and highly efficient operation of cold chain logistics companies can effectively reduce logistics costs, thereby allowing cold chain logistics to be applied to more industries. Therefore, cold chain logistics companies can help production enterprises save money and costs while opening up larger markets, achieving a win-win situation for both manufacturers and logistics providers. Of course, this requires the joint efforts of policies, associations, production enterprises, logistics companies, and consumers." He believes that the main problems currently facing the domestic cold chain logistics industry are small scale and lack of standardization, which lead to low operational efficiency.
Liu Weizhan, Secretary General of the Cold Chain Logistics Branch of the National Logistics Standardization Technical Committee, believes that as the logistics industry has been listed as one of China's ten major revitalization industries, the cold chain logistics industry also faces new development opportunities. "Compared with foreign countries, China's cold chain logistics industry is still in its infancy. The next 15 years will be a period of rapid development for China's cold chain logistics industry. We will fully mobilize all parties, accelerate the formulation of various policies and regulations, and strive to create a favorable environment for the development of the domestic cold chain logistics industry from a policy perspective," said Liu Weizhan.
Foreign Cold Chain Giants Enter China
In March 2008, Swire, Australia's largest cold chain logistics provider, and Guangdong Food Import & Export Group jointly invested to establish Swire Cold Chain Logistics Co., Ltd. in Guangzhou. At the end of March this year, Swire's new cold storage facility was completed, bringing the company's total cold storage capacity to a massive 40,000 tons.
In July 2009, Preferred Freezer Services (PFE), the second-largest cold chain logistics operator in the United States, began construction of its cold storage base in Shanghai. Its cold storage facility in Shenzhen is also currently in the intense preparation and construction stage.
In March 2010, Americold, the largest cold chain enterprise in the United States, established a joint venture with China Merchants International to layout its presence in the Chinese cold chain logistics market.