Top 5 cool chain innovations making a difference in supply chain quality

Flower Watch

Flowers are becoming another highly sought-after perishable all around the globe, and a major challenge for shippers that need the fragile buds to last for at least ten days. While most shippers of flowers know how to vent the ethylene gas that is naturally produced by cut flowers and can accelerate decay, it is often hard to detect how much damage has been done until premature wilting happens days later.

One company, called Flower Watch, has developed a system called “Watch-itT,” which uses a series of stickers that can visually monitor the loss of “vase life.” The Watch-itT lets customers see at a glance whether the shipped flowers were shipped in optimal conditions – if the stickers are still green when the flowers arrive, they should be OK for the next several days, but if the sticker turns red, it indicates that conditions during shipment exceeded a pre-set temperature limit, meaning the flowers will be more likely to wilt.