Challenges and opportunities in remote monitoring of perishable products

Temperature deviations during transport and storage still cause a significant amount of food loss. A large portion of this loss could be avoided if information regarding deviating transport conditions and resulting changes in remaining shelf life of packed food would be available in real-time. In this study, we detail a prototype of such an intelligent container. The technical system, and results from tests in trans-ocean transportation of bananas are presented. The system is also able to predict hot-spots, which were identified as the most crucial risk for product loss. Although several technical solutions for remote container monitoring (RCM) and wireless temperature data logging are available on the market, a wide application of the concept of real-time shelf life monitoring is still lacking. Most problems result from the splitting of the cold chain into multiple actors, and different manufacturers and target customer groups for RMC and for wireless sensor systems.