Cold Chain and Packaging for Food Exports
For fresh and frozen food, the deal is won or lost long after the price is agreed. The "cold chain" means keeping the product at its correct temperature at every single step — field, packhouse, cold store, truck, port, vessel, arrival. One warm gap can turn a profitable container into a rejected claim, and the argument that follows is usually about who can prove what.
Pre-cooling: the step people skip
Freshly harvested produce carries field heat, and it keeps respiring — generating more heat and using up its own shelf life. Removing that heat quickly, before the product goes into storage or a container, is the single highest-leverage thing most exporters can do for quality on arrival.
A reefer container is designed to hold a temperature, not to pull it down. Loading warm product and expecting the container to fix it is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes in perishable export.
Shipping cold: what to get right
Agree the temperature in writing
Put the set-point (and, where relevant, ventilation and humidity) in the contract and on the booking. "Keep it cold" is not a specification, and it is not defensible if there's a dispute.
Use temperature loggers
Put recording devices in the load so you have independent evidence of the journey. This protects you as often as it exposes you — plenty of claims collapse when the data shows the container ran correctly and the problem started after delivery.
Don't block the airflow
Reefers cool by circulating air through the stow. Over-stacking past the load line, blocking the floor channels, or wrapping pallets so tightly that air can't move will produce warm spots no matter how good the machinery is.
Plan for the gaps, not the voyage
The sea leg is usually the best-controlled part. The risk sits in the handovers: waiting on a hot apron, plug-out during transfer, customs holds, and the final delivery leg.
Sea or air?
Sea freight in a reefer is the economic default for volume, and controlled- or modified-atmosphere options can extend shelf life enough to make long routes viable. Air freight costs several times more per kilo and is worth it only for genuinely short-life product, a premium early-season window, or getting samples in front of a buyer quickly. If air freight is the only way your economics work, the route probably isn't viable at scale.
Packaging that survives the trip and the retailer
Cartons rated for the load
Export cartons must hold their strength when stacked, chilled and humid — conditions that flatten packaging chosen for a dry domestic warehouse. Retail increasingly wants tidy, shelf-ready formats too.
ISPM 15 for wooden pallets
Wood packaging must be treated and stamped under the ISPM 15 standard or it can be refused at the border — a paperwork failure that strands otherwise perfect cargo.
Confirm the pallet format
Europe generally runs Euro pallets (80×120 cm) or industrial (100×120 cm); North America generally 48×40 inch. Getting this wrong means re-palletising at destination, at your cost.
Barcodes and pallet labels
Retail units need scannable GS1 barcodes; pallets going into a retailer's distribution centre typically need an SSCC label. Without them your goods can't enter the buyer's system.
Traceability is packaging too
Every carton should carry a lot or batch code that ties back to a specific harvest and production run. If something goes wrong, the difference between recalling one lot and recalling everything you ever sent that buyer is exactly this. It is also the first thing a food-safety auditor tests.
Before you quote a perishable shipment
- Confirm the temperature regime and who is responsible for it at each leg.
- Get door-to-door quotes from forwarders who actually handle perishables — and clarify who pays destination charges.
- Check the buyer's pallet, carton and labelling spec before costing the packaging.
- Build the cost of loggers, pre-cooling and correct pallets into the price rather than discovering them afterwards.
Where this fits with AgrifoodQuote
AgrifoodQuote captures packaging requirements and shelf life from the buyer's inquiry, and the pack-and-container calculator turns unit weights, carton counts and pallet configuration into containers needed — so you can sanity-check a shipment before you commit to a price.
This guide is for general reference and doesn't constitute legal, technical or trade-compliance advice. Temperature regimes, packaging rules and phytosanitary requirements vary by product and destination — confirm them with your buyer, forwarder and the destination authority.