New guidance from Mitie offers retail organisations a route to cold chain confidence.
The advice comes after a record-breaking summer, which saw heat-stressed chillers breaking down across the country. This impacted multiple retailers, inconvenienced thousands of customers and led to spoiled goods.
The guide says: “In food retail, refrigeration is where a quiet fault becomes an expensive one. It means perishable stock being written off, a food safety risk and lost trade. Reactive fixes can take several hours, with the negative impact increasing as time goes on. So, simply waiting for a cold chain failure is the most costly strategy.”
Multiple benefits include less wasted energy
Mitie’s refrigeration specialist, Forest Group, offers remote monitoring, which means equipment performance anomalies are flagged before serious breakdowns occur. It’s just one example of streamlining operations with data and intelligence. The approach makes first-time fixes more likely, enhances convenience and customer experience and can reduce maintenance requirements by up to 15%.
Forest Operations Director, Andrew Fraser, says: “Systems developing a fault almost always use more energy before failure. Early prediction and action can cut avoidable consumption. You also get reduced wasted energy.”
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Four-step process
Cold chain confidence – powering retail’s critical moments delves into the four steps that shape Mitie’s approach:
- Track every fridge and freezer live
- Spot the drift before the failure
- Fix remotely when possible
- Get the right specialist on site
To read more about the process and join other leading organisations that are cold chain confident, click below.