What the cold chain covers
The smart cold-chain solution puts temperature and humidity sensors and location devices on cold stores, refrigerated vehicles, and delivery boxes. With the IoT platform, temperature is collected, watched, alarmed, and kept as a trace. When a reading goes out of range, the people who need to act are told at once, before the load is lost. Temperature reports that meet HACCP and GSP are produced on their own, which lowers the cost of staying compliant and makes customers more willing to trust the shipment.
A cold chain runs from production through storage and transport to delivery. One broken temperature window can spoil the goods or cause a food-safety incident. Pharmaceutical lanes are tighter still: 2–8°C and −20°C, and vaccines and biological products must be traceable under the Good Supply Practice for Pharmaceuticals. Food lanes have to protect shelf life and limit loss. Fresh e-commerce and prepared meals push the last mile harder on both speed and temperature. The design is device, edge, and cloud, over NB-IoT, 4G, and LoRa, for a fixed cold store or a moving vehicle, so the path from origin to the table can be seen, managed, and traced.
The market and the rules
The Cold Chain Logistics Committee of the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing puts China's cold-chain market above RMB 550 billion in 2023, with compound growth above 15% a year. The 14th Five-Year Plan for Cold Chain Logistics Development calls for a backbone of four east-west and four north-south corridors, and a fuller infrastructure network by 2025. The 2021 Drug Administration Law and the Good Supply Practice tightened traceability for pharmaceutical cold chains: vaccines and biological products need a temperature record and an electronic trace. For food, the Food Safety Law and GB 31605-2020, the hygienic standard for food cold-chain logistics, set rules for temperature, records, and traceability. Pharma, food, and fresh e-commerce companies are all being pushed to digitize the cold chain.
On standards, GB/T 28843-2012 covers traceability for food cold-chain logistics, and GB/T 36088-2018 covers cold-chain information management, including temperature records, trace codes, and how data is stored. Pharmaceutical lanes also follow the GSP appendix on storing and transporting refrigerated and frozen drugs, and the rules for storing and transporting vaccines.
Where cold chains still fail
- Blind spots in temperature: Paper logs and spot checks do not cover the full day. Cold stores, the road, and loading bays go unwatched, and a late alarm means lost product.
- Compliance is expensive: Writing and filing temperature records by hand takes time, and an inspection can find gaps or records that look altered. Pharma must pass a GSP audit. Food companies face HACCP, ISO 22000, and similar certifications.
- Nobody owns the damage: Across many handovers the chain of responsibility breaks. When goods spoil, it is hard to say who is responsible, and disputes cost money.
- The last mile: Fresh e-commerce and prepared meals struggle to be both fast and cold. A delivery box that cannot hold temperature is where quality drops.
