New developments in the cold chain: Commercial Manager Arno Zomer takes us through them

Extreme temperature changes, more sustainable solutions and the growth of pharma and e-commerce: some of the drivers and developments in the cold chain industry. Arno Zomer, Commercial Manager of Coolpack, takes us through notable changes in the market and looks ahead.

Arno looks back on 2022: an eventful year for the cold chain market

Now that the new year has started, we can look back on a very interesting period for the cold chain market last year. Because developments in society drove changes in the market of refrigerated and conditioned shipping and storage.

Dry ice scarcity. First of all, rising prices and large shortages of dry ice impacted the industry: as fertilizer suppliers had to cease part of their operations due to skyrocketing gas prices, there was a shortage of carbon dioxide, the raw material of dry ice. Companies like Picnic discontinued frozen food transport and began looking for a more stable and reliable freezing agent.
Pharmaceutical growth. Another development affecting the cold chain market is the still increasing aging population. To illustrate, in 1990 a mere 13% of the population in the Netherlands was 65+, today it is over 20%. And this is expected to increase even further until 2040 . With this, the demand for care and the use of medication will also increase. Innovations in the pharmaceutical sector ensure that there is a medicine for more and more diseases, but these medications must also be stored and transported under specific conditions in order to maintain their quality.

We think with you

Customization for your unique challenge

Choose solutions that fully meet your needs. At Coolpack, we’re ready with innovative and reliable products for conditioned transport. Together we will be happy to discuss what works for you. Discover what’s possible. Click below for more information.

Specialist in the market

For conditioned transport

Always a solution

Perfectly tailored to your situation

Fast delivery

Your products safe and fresh

Trusted quality

Known to perform time and again

Suppliers close to home. Third, we are noticing increasing requests here close to home: companies have been alerted to the risks of long overseas shipments by temporary blockages of trade routes such as the Suez Canal. Container prices going through the roof and ships coming to a standstill regularly play up. But also the growth of social awareness of global depletion is causing companies to make more sustainable choices and seek suppliers closer to home.

Changing climate. In the next century, we will face higher temperatures and a higher dispersion. Heat waves will be more frequent and have become more extreme. With changing weather conditions, the demand for tools to achieve proper and stable temperature on the road is increasing.

Growth e-commerce. Online ordering was already on the rise, but has accelerated since the corona pandemic. In many sectors, online ordering and home delivery directly to consumers suddenly became commonplace, which in the case of perishable goods increased the demand for optimal shipping packaging. With our collaborative platform Food e-Commerce, we help hospitality entrepreneurs and food producers to grow online and offline.

Changing customer demand

My team and I clearly notice the effects of the above developments. Customers and interested parties are asking new questions or placing more emphasis on certain questions than before. First, we notice that customers are increasingly looking for a complete, validated solution. A total solution that has already been tested for their application. Because of our decades of experience, we have had almost every question before or have similar customers already using a specific solution. From shipping pallets of chocolate to transporting medicines according to GDP guidelines. This evidence and our experience ensure that we can provide sound advice.

Absorption mat 1500 ml – while supplies last

€ 64,00 excl. btw

200 pieces per box

200 x 320 mm

View product

Tray 0 °C 300 grams

€ 47,60 excl. btw

56 pieces per box

150 x 190 x 25 mm

View product

EPS box 30 liters, incl. Lid (pallet)

€ 520,00 excl. btw

600 x 400 x 300 mm

View product

Customers also like to choose a small number of reliable suppliers. This provides ordering convenience and purchasing advantages.

We also notice that customers are increasingly asking us for sustainable solutions. This pleases me, because it is an important motivation to develop further in this area together with our customers. For example, we are taking a close look at the raw materials we use, we are mapping out the life cycle of our products in a transparent manner, and we are constantly making our premises and production facility more sustainable. It is a subject that is receiving more and more attention and is intrinsic to our team. Our parent company Bunzl also devotes a lot of attention to this issue, including the Believe CSR policy.

In some cases, changing customer demand is also driven by differences in applicable legislation by country. For example, a customer in France must always ship fresh produce refrigerated – regardless of weather conditions, and we modified our recipe for a customer in Israel due to material use restrictions.

New opportunities and innovations

This changing customer demand results in closer cooperation with our partners. Think, for example, of more extensive possibilities in the field of Phase Change Material (PCM). PCM is essentially not something new: PCM solutions have long been used to ensure stable and correct temperature. However, due to product innovations, the quality of PCM continues to improve and the temperature range for which we offer PCM solutions has increased dramatically. Whereas initially the focus was on cooling, freezing and temperature elements from say -20 °C to +20 °C, we now offer solutions from -65 °C to +89 °C!

We offer these in both form-fixed and flexible elements. By machining the form-fixed cooling bottles, the density of the bottle is higher, preventing the PCM gel from migrating. For the flexible, disposable PCM solutions, we choose a film with higher density than our regular gel packs, also because then the PCM gel does not penetrate through the material to the outside.

The field of application of temperature elements is also becoming increasingly broad: our customer base is far from being limited to the food and pharma sector. Within installation, storage, logistics and the living organisms branch, PCM solutions are increasingly being deployed, both in disposable and reusable form. Consider the example of cold rooms, where high energy and cost savings are achieved thanks to our solutions.

Questions about sustainability force us to remain critical: at Coolpack, we do everything we can not to fall back on assumptions and to really properly research which material for a specific application is the most sustainable when looking at the total picture. Maybe a certain material sounds hugely environmentally conscious, but it has to travel halfway around the world to get to our production facility or the possibilities for proper disposal by the end user are limited. For example, the Styrofoam that our EPS boxes are made of is a great recyclable material, only it has to go into the right waste stream to do so. The EcoCoolBox and EcoFreezeBox that we introduced are made entirely of paper and can be easily recycled with the waste paper almost anywhere after use.

Fortunately, the market is changing tremendously and more and more is possible than not. It is up to us to offer the most sustainable solutions within the set quality requirements.

2023 and beyond

The coming year also promises to be interesting. With customers in increasingly diverse industries, we are further expanding our knowledge and experience. Our increasingly wide range of PCM solutions of great quality helps customers achieve stable temperature solutions and high energy savings. We work together with our partners and our British sister company Hydropac, enabling us to introduce the innovative frozen gel packs EasiFreeze (-16°C) and HydroFreeze+ (-21°C) in continental Europe as well. Validated total solutions ensure maximum quality retention in the pharmaceutical and food sectors. And new applications of materials enable us to make our range ever more sustainable.

I am confident that we can once again help many customers in this new year with solutions to ensure a good, reliable cold chain!

Staying informed?

Want to stay up to date on new developments in the cold chain market and at Coolpack? Then follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and sign up for our monthly newsletter! Know where to find our team with all your questions: you can count on a response to your request within one working day.

Sustainability Coolpack and CSR

At Coolpack, we are aware of our responsibility to contribute to society. Both in terms of sustainability and society as a social body.

We weigh the interests of the customer, the environment and society, as well as ourselves as an organization, in all business decisions. In this way, we achieve balanced business operations and together ensure an ever better world.