Freight to Plate: A taste for the exotic

Listening to your shippers

Hellmann also pays close attention to the beginning and ends of the grow­ing seasons for some commodities. “At the start of certain fruit seasons, the return on the early-arrival fruit is quite often higher and hence the higher freight costs by airfreight can be ab­sorbed,” Fellmann said. “Many sellers use fruit as consumer drivers, and their aim is to provide fruit with the highest possible quality at all times.”

Similarly, at Lufthansa Cargo, “natu­ral maturity” is a key consideration in the handling of highly sensitive foods, said Uta Frank, the carrier’s product and solutions manager for tempera­ture-sensitive logistics. Through close co-operation with supply-chain part­ners from the farm until delivery to the final consignee, forwarders and carri­ers can time delivery for a very narrow window of opportunity for ripeness.

“For example, an airfreight mango is harvested at a later stage than a mango which will be transported by sea,” Frank explained. “This means the airfreight product can be bought as ‘ready to eat’ in the supermarkets, and customers will experience a big differ­ence in quality and taste.”

Since 2002, Lufthansa Cargo has also operated its “Fresh/td To-Door” service from its Frankfurt Perishables Center hub, which has evolved over the years to help serve customers more directly. At first, Frank said, the service was set up to deliver perishables directly into main perishable import markets, such as the U.K., Switzerland and France, without having a direct flight offered to these markets. “Now, we can deliver directly into the warehouses of the customers,” she said.

In 2014, LH Cargo began working with a new Fresh/td To-Door delivery partner and has increased the number of its customers, Frank said. At the start of this year, the carrier launched a new Fresh/td To-Door lane from South-America to Russia, using the vacuum- cooling facility in Frankfurt.

While these methods are laudable, Helms, with the Cool Chain Group, said a more holistic strategy is needed to improve overall food quality. Ac­cording to the organization’s research, 30 percent of perishable food ship­ments routinely arrive spoiled. “This is happening globally, and it’s not improv­ing at all,” he said. “Most retailers will refuse spoilage of just 5 to 10 percent.”

In some regions, there are major infrastructure issues that contribute to spoilage. “Look at some of these coast­al cities that export fish around the world, like Lima, Peru,” he added. “Go 20 kilometers away by land and you will not see a fish delivered. You cannot go anywhere quickly on these roads.”

But the core reason for the dismal spoilage figures is the complexity of the supply chain and the weakness of certain links. “If somebody in the sup­ply chain won’t do their job, there’s lit­tle an air operator can do,” Helms said. For instance, while most large trucking companies do an excellent job of ship­ping perishables, he said there are a lot of “very small operators that don’t give a rat’s ass.” To save fuel, some unscru­pulous drivers will turn off their reefer units during their shipment. “Until they get these operators under control, nothing will change,” he added.