The Move to -15°C global coalition supported by The Cold Chain Federation and the British Frozen Food Federation is coming just at the right time, with constant evidence of global warming, increasing fuel costs and ever increasing costs of labour. Raising temperatures of frozen foods would not only enable a huge reduction in emissions and operational cost; which would benefit both the environment and logistics providers, but also buffer some of the ever increasing food costs experienced by the everyday consumers.
What is the The Move to -15°C coalition?
The global coalition is campaigning to modify a standard that was created almost a century ago, by increasing temperatures at which frozen food is stored and transported by +3°C to -15°C.
What effect would The Move to -15°C have?
Adoption of the change across the supply chain would mean a potential saving of 17.7 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, that’s 8.6% of the UK’s energy consumption, the equivalent of taking 3.8 million cars off the road which would be a major reduction in carbon emissions.
With regards to food safety; pathogens grow when food is above -2°C, therefore food safety would not be affected by the change.However food quality can be greatly impacted by variations or decreased temperatures, but with recent studies concluding that quality is not compromised with such a small increase apart from in ice cream products (which has a recommended storage of -20°C), there is hope for the long term implementation.
With Morrissons supermarkets already trialling the 3 degree increase, this carves out a positive path for industry leaders to follow suit and adopt the changes without fear of negative repercussions.
How would The Move to -15°C impact the end consumer?
With food costs set to rise again in July 2025 when they implement further border checks on fresh produce, the end consumers are really feeling the pinch and the cost savings from these changes could go some way to leveraging the impact of the ever rising cost of the weekly shop.
Here at SUBZERO we believe increasing warehouse temperatures would vastly benefit the environment, make operation costs significantly lower and have very little effect on quality of produce, thus making it an obvious positive step in the future of cold chain logistics. However, with a lot of logistics companies insisting on temperatures below -18°C we have some way to go before wide acceptance of increased temperatures.
