Extreme weather, pandemics, geopolitical conflict, and natural disasters are the events that most affect the fresh food supply chain. At the time of writing this, we’re watching many fresh food businesses grapple with all the above. Egg prices in the US are soaring due to a bird flu outbreak and those who relied on California farmers for their fresh food supply are still struggling to adapt after the devastating fires there.
The pandemic alone exposed vulnerabilities in food supply chains around the globe, and as disruptions continue to pop up, it’s a lesson to the fresh food industry to stay nimble and resilient. Navigating the choppy seas of modern supply chain disruptions is no mean feat, but there are plenty of innovations and technologies that can help fresh food businesses stay on course.
Overcoming Challenges in Maintaining Freshness and Ensuring Timely Deliveries
Even without the macroscale threat of supply chain disruption, there is still the daily task of trying to ensure food freshness and timely deliveries. Wasted time is the enemy of fresh food. As stock sits, it loses shelf-life and value. Here are some of the biggest challenges we see businesses facing in this area and ways to overcome them:
Temperature Control: More than 13% of all food produced is lost due to poor refrigeration. Trying to keep food at proper temperatures and maintaining freshness is the biggest challenge of the fresh food industry. The solution lies in cold chain technology that includes both smart refrigeration in terms of vehicles and general storage, as well as more innovative packaging materials.
Complex Logistics Networks: Fresh food supply chains are often hindered by their complexity. Poor coordination between farmers, wholesalers, etc. is what often causes delays or breaks in the cold chain and adds to the risk of spoiling valuable goods. Avoiding these inefficiencies requires two things: more streamlined logistics and accurate forecasting.
Forecasting helps optimize inventory, so you can mitigate the risks of over- or under-stocking. Streamlining logistics processes and communications helps reduce the risk of spoilage related to improper handling. Technology can also be used to centralize and share data between all parties, creating supply chain visibility that reduces errors and minimizes losses.
Transport: Efficient, on-time deliveries are a crucial part of being able to sell food while it’s still fresh and viable. One of the best ways to tackle this challenge is to embrace data-driven technology that can optimize routing, streamline schedules, monitor temperatures in transit, and automate the detailed work of aligning transport needs with freshness requirements.
Enhancing Fresh Food Supply Chain Resilience: Strategies for Suppliers
The concept of supply chain resilience is by no means new. What is new is just how many companies are adopting it, especially through technology-driven strategies.
Here’s what’s relevant to fresh food suppliers and how the industry can build resilience in its supply chains:
- Invest in Technology: We’ll explore this in more detail in the next section but physical tech in the form of GPS trackers and sensors, as well as AI-driven algorithms, can optimize everything from inventory management to logistics decisions and, in turn, help buffer supply chains against possible disruptions.
- Supply Chain Visibility: Technology plays a major role in this. Being able to see what’s happening across the whole supply chain in real time ensures far greater flexibility and, as a result, resilience.
- Diversify Sourcing: Though an overly complex sourcing network can be its own hindrance, it’s still important that there be some diversification. It ensures that if there’s a disruption in one node of the supply chain, businesses at least have a backup to turn to and can avoid the catastrophe of a stock shortage.
- Consider Sustainability: The strategies that make supply chains more sustainable are often the same ones that make them more resilient. A key example of this is reducing transportation emissions. Reducing emissions requires embracing efficiencies in transportation practices such as load, mode and route optimization.
Embracing Technological Innovations to Revolutionize the Fresh Food Supply Chain
In addition to Order Management and Operations software like Fresho, here are the other key technologies that are changing the game for enterprise fresh food wholesalers:
- Transportation Management Systems (TMS): A TMS is a critical tool for fresh food logistics, optimizing transportation planning and execution to ensure timely, efficient deliveries. With real-time tracking and data-driven insights, a TMS helps logistics managers make proactive decisions, reducing transit delays and spoilage risks. By automating scheduling, route optimization, and carrier selection, a TMS enhances supply chain visibility, ensuring that fresh food reaches its destination in optimal condition.
- Integration Middleware: Seamless communication between different logistics systems and other enterprise platforms is essential for efficiency, and this is where integration middleware plays a crucial role. By connecting a company’s TMS, ERP, Warehouse Management System (WMS), Inventory Management System (IMS), Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platform (RTTVP), and more, integration middleware creates a unified tech ecosystem. This ensures synchronized data across all touchpoints, reducing manual errors, improving coordination with carriers, and enhancing visibility across the supply chain. For fresh food logistics, this translates into fewer disruptions, better temperature control, and improved response times to unforeseen challenges.
- IoT Sensors: These sensors can be used to monitor and send alerts when refrigeration units and other machinery break down and provide real-time data on the location of inventory which can then be fed into transportation optimization platforms.
- Demand Forecasting with AI: Food trends come in waves. Sometimes that’s because of a TikTok cucumber craze or because precious goods are stuck in international waters due to conflict. Good forecasting catches these trends early and helps businesses predict demand so they can better prepare their logistics strategies.
- RFID Tags: Widely shown to improve food freshness thanks to their ability to track everything from humidity to temperature (which smart fridges can then use to adjust conditions as needed), RFID tags are another highly effective piece of technology for improving cold chain efficiency and logistics.
- Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms (RTTVP): These platforms rely on GPS tracking and IoT sensors to create end-to-end supply chain visibility. This makes coordinating between different aspects of the network that much easier and ensures that delays are caught early enough to be mitigated.
Looking Ahead
Partnering with a trusted 3PL or 4PL provider can be a game-changer for fresh food businesses navigating today’s complex and unpredictable supply chain landscape. With expertise in temperature-controlled logistics, real-time visibility, and advanced technology solutions, these partners help ensure food arrives fresh, on time, and with minimal waste. By leveraging the right logistics support, fresh food suppliers can enhance efficiency, mitigate risks, and stay resilient in the face of disruptions—allowing them to focus on delivering quality products to their customers.
