Telematics can enhance temperature control
New technologies can improve chilled transport practices, refrigeration experts say
Besides the splendour of its record-breaking supertalls and impressive cars, the one thing Dubai is globally renowned for is its long summer months. The summer-sand-shopping combination has greatly aided the city’s transition into a luxurious tourism spot. But how does Dubai, where a typical summer day can be anywhere between 35°C and 40°C, keep its impeccable imports of food and drink safe from the sun?
Enter the cool kids. Over the years, refrigerated trucks have become an integral part, if not the lifeline, of Dubai’s many industries which require that goods are maintained at feasible temperatures. Paul Austin-Price, senior business development manager at Gorica Group UAE, tells Truck & Fleet ME about the need for refrigerated vehicles in Dubai and the rest of the GCC.
“Pharmaceuticals is one industry which wants you to tell them what state you’re delivering their goods in,” Austin-Price says.
“The F&B industry is along these lines too. The market for refrigerated trucks is usually for those goods which have to be kept at a constant temperature. Goods like computers, for instance, tend to use dry boxes, which are really just boxes and don’t require a standard temperature while in transit.”
However, while the F&B and pharma industries are both massively spread across the UAE, they aren’t the only ones driving demand for refrigerated vehicles in the country. Lars Moller, general manager of the after sales division at Al Shirawi Enterprises, says a city like Dubai uses chilled vehicles for more than just food and medicines.
“Healthcare is definitely a huge market for refrigerated vehicles. They’re used to transport tetra packs for blood banks, for instance, besides medicines,” Moller says.
“Even water transportation, which isn’t refrigerated locally yet, could do with such trucks. The liquid is really taken around town in bottles which are made of plastic and packed in a container without an opening to let the heat out. That could be dangerous and is an issue refrigerated transport can resolve.
“But there’s other areas where such trucks are equally functional too,” Moller continues. “For instance, if you’re transporting wine or high-end cigars across the city, then you need refrigerated trucks, because these products demand maintenance at a certain temperature.
“Imagine carrying wine around this city in an ordinary truck which cannot control the humidity or heat levels around the product,” Moller shudders. “The fermentation will most definitely spoil the wine, and you’ll end up with some very expensive vinegar instead!”
Moller isn’t wrong. In August 2014, Reuters quoted a report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) in London that said India “is forecast to spend $15 billion by 2019 on cooling infrastructure” due to the rise in demand for fresh produce, meat, fish and milk. The IME report continues: “A… survey in India showed that at least 40% of all its fruit and vegetables is lost between grower and consumer due to lack of refrigerated transport,” besides other infrastructural shortcomings.
To Moller, health safety is the largest benefit of refrigerated transport. “When I go to get my groceries, I tend to park around their loading areas. Some of the stuff I’ve seen there is just…” he trails off.
Prodded further, Moller elucidates: “Drivers tend to leave the vehicle doors open in high temperatures without consideration for the produce inside. They’re supposed to keep the refrigerated door latched at all times, but not all of them do.
“I’m a big fan of ice cream but the quality of ice cream in many supermarket chains tells me it has been refrozen, which means the vehicle must have been left unrefrigerated for a while. The attitude is a serious gap in the system and the way things should be done.”
It is perhaps to correct this gap that the UAE introduced a new draft law in April 2014, according to which food dealers stocking or selling rotten goods face up to three years of imprisonment and a fine of $544,514.
“All the food that you consume comes in refrigerated trailers, such as fruit from Syria and meat from North Africa,” Gorica’s Austin-Price says. “It’s all pre-packed into refrigerated trailers, and you can rent refrigerated or chilled trucks. How cold they want the container to be depends on the operators. They can alter it and even take it down to –20°C if they’d like to.”
Ask him whether the basics of refrigerated transport are adhered to, and Austin-Price is quick to point out the role of electronic control systems in ensuring driver behaviour is monitored for satisfactory performance.
“Airlines like Emirates and Etihad tend to use telematics systems to check what temperature their in-flight meals were placed in the truck at, what temperature they were transported at, the temperature at the time of unloading and so on,” Austin-Price says.
“Furthermore, these systems are also handy if you want to monitor how many times the door was opened, how long it was left open for and other such factors which lead to change in temperature. It’s becoming increasingly more complex, because if you’re moving food all around the country, then you’ve got to be careful with your operations,” the Gorica senior manager warns.
You’d assume refrigeration would go hand-in-hand with food safety in a region known for recording temperatures as high as 50°C, but the case isn’t always so. In August 2013, The National reported 83 shops in Sharjah had been fined for turning off refrigeration on their premises. This led to 720kg of food being confiscated since it had gone stale as a result of poorly managed refrigeration practices.
The case may be no different with refrigerated trucks, making telematics a greater need for the local truck industry, ASE’s Moller says. “If you compare the value of what they’re transporting versus the value of the telematics system, then it’s peanuts! The problem isn’t that we lack the methods to control refrigeration, because we really don’t. The problem is in the approach of the fleet operator. Refrigeration is a market where easy money can be made and you often have a lot of these small shops refrigerating their minivans and pickups with poor HVAC units.
“It might be easier to work with these smaller firms if they’re the more sophisticated kinds, but often a lot of firms resist telematics, saying it costs too much. The truth is, it’s a small slice of the total cost of the unit if you view it practically.”
Clearly, refrigerating vehicles is perhaps an activity best left to the more experienced players in the market, where Gorica has a leading reputation as a manufacturer of refrigerated vehicles. Next year, the firm will relocate its factory to Dubai International City, where production will be ramped up to meet the growing demand for Gorica’s services, which can refrigerate vehicles ranging from mini trucks to supersized ones.
Austin-Price puts it succinctly: “The boys [companies] newly entering the market manufacture refrigerated vehicles only about 6m long. We can go up to 15m and refrigerate trailers as well.”
ASE’s Moller echoes the need for only experienced firms to undertake refrigeration transport. “We are the authorised dealer for Carrier Transicold in the region, so we know our market and products very well. We’ve noticed fleet companies often pick unit providers which may offer products at a lower cost than ours, but the long-term impacts of those units can be extremely expensive, monetarily and in terms of quality too.
“My homemade Scandinavian philosophy is to invest in time or I will be dead tomorrow, but some companies here seem to think, ‘Why should I invest now? I’ll be dead tomorrow anyway,’” Moller rues. “It’s a very short-sighted point of view. Not all firms are bad, but some companies could really work to improve their quality and performance.”
