MobiFresh
Mobile Cooling Solutions
Introduction
Before being cut, fresh produce is part of a living organism. Once cut, it begins to go through organic deterioration. This means that fresh produce starts to lose its water content and freshness. To delay this process of organic deterioration, cooling is of the utmost importance. The sooner cooling begins after fresh produce is cut, the more we can preserve its freshness and delay the process of organic deterioration.
Throughout its journey from the field to the pack-house to ports or markets, fresh produce requires a variety of cooling processes to maintain its freshness and maximize its shelf life. The following is a brief explanation of these cooling processes.
Cooling Processes
Pre-Cooling
Pre-cooling is often the first cooling process applied to fresh produce when it first arrives at the pack-house. The purpose of pre-cooling is to reduce the temperature of the freshly picked unprocessed fresh produce from field temperature, down to the pack-house temperature. This helps preserve the fresh produce as it awaits its turn to be sorted and packed. Pre-cooling is one of the more energy consuming cooling processes for fresh produce.
Cold Warehousing
Cold warehousing refers to the temperature control applied to the pack-house sorting and packing areas.
Fast-Cooling
Fast-cooling is the process applied to fresh produce to bring its temperature down to its optimum storage temperature (the temperature at which fresh produce goes into hibernation, thereby maximizing the storage period it can sustain with the minimum possible effect of organic deterioration). This is typically applied to fully sorted and packed produce to prepare it for cold storage pending transportation to its final destination. This is the costliest and most technologically demanding cooling process. It is energy intensive and requires special airflow management.
Cold Storage
Cold storage is used to hold the fresh produce temperature at its optimum storage temperature, arrived at through the fast-cooling process in the preceding stage.
Cold Transport
Cold transport takes place as fresh produce is being transported from the field to the pack-house or from the pack-house to its final destination.
The Problem
Once cut, every minute fresh produce spends without removing its field heat affects its subsequent freshness and shelf life. Typically, after being cut, fresh produce is cold transported to pack-houses for sorting, packing, and storage. During this stage, cold transportation is only able to reduce fresh produce temperature by a few degrees Celsius at the most. In hot weather countries such as Egypt and other African countries, this is not sufficient to preserve fresh produce and minimize the process of organic deterioration. Once cut, every hour, fresh produce spends until its temperature is brought down to its optimum (hibernation) temperature, it loses up to one whole day of its shelf life. Therefore, the sooner pre-cooling and/or fast-cooling processes are applied to freshly cut produce, the more it keeps of its maximum shelf life. Lacking timely cooling solutions due to being remotely located or simply being far from cooling facilities means that fresh produce can spend hours at field temperature before receiving the proper cooling it desperately needs to maintain its freshness, water content -and therefore weight, and extend its shelf life to maximize its value. This is where our MobiFresh solutions come in.
The Solution
Ideally pre-cooling needs to take place as soon as fresh produce is harvested which means it needs to happen on field or in close proximity to it. On the other hand, fast cooling typically takes place after the produce has been sorted and packed and is ready for storage. Again, the sooner after packing it happens, the better it is for the freshness and shelf life of fresh produce.
MobiFresh offers an innovative approach to pre-cooling and fast-cooling of fresh produce using mobile containers to improve the supply chain efficiency, reduce fresh produce losses, increase shelf life, and improve freshness. This is achieved via a proprietary configuration of components of the cooling process which enables us to pack the functionality of pre-cooling and fast cooling in standard size containers which can then be easily transported from one location to another on the backs of semi-truck beds at any time as well as freight shipping internationally.
This opens the door to a variety of applications from servicing remote areas lacking timely access to cooling chains to providing alternatives and/or extensions for brick & mortar facilities.
Typical Use Cases
1. In field pre-cooling using MobiFresh mobile pre-cooling units shortly after harvesting fresh produce.
2. In field fast-cooling using MobiFresh mobile fast-cooling units in the case of field packed produce.
3. Flexible expansion of brick and mortar pack-houses using MobiFresh mobile cooling units during peak season or as a means of accommodating growth in operations.
4. Flexible, modular, and fast alternative to brick and mortar pack-houses especially in remote areas.
5. In-field pre-cooling of fresh produce in preparation of transporting to local markets.