The Food Industry

The unique feature of the food industry is that is should be built considering the seasonal constraints, which assumes the well thought planning and infrastructure design to be able to meet certain quality and price criteria and satisfy customers/consumers. Taking the abovementioned into considerations some companies specialised in food industry has established group under name of Cool Cargo, with great expertise in the transportation, storage and handling of short life and "temperature sensitive" food products by application of specially designed thermal protection (Cool Cargo web page).

The design adopted by Cool Cargo group has provided ability for controlling the movement of perishable food products at each stage of shipment starting at "pack house, inbound transportation, ground handling facilities, ramp, air transportation monitoring and end clearing agents" (Cool Cargo web page).

The supply visibility gained by the group has been achieved through the well established and controlled logistics and supply chain infrastructure.

Supply Chain and Logistics infrastructure in cold chain

Robinson (2009, p.10) indicates that "supply adjustments" are required for perishable food products to move them closer to the final process of consumption. The thought highlights the need for perishable food products to be treated in a special manner, keeping extra care on the freshness of products, as well as being able to deliver it straight to customers/consumer within limited time frame. For sure, it raises certain concerns in supply chain as costs versus responsiveness. This factor has been recognized in the work by Kozenski & Behn (2008, p.20) as companies involved in the food industry should deliberately control and manage all the incurred costs at all the stages "from the warehouse to freight and transportation". Any uncontrolled actions or error in the process will result in the extra costs that company will have to consume affecting its overall profits.

The abovementioned idea has been captured by Cool Cargo as well. The company has established well integrated logistics infrastructure, together with well developed relationships with Thai suppliers of the product, helping to get goods processed and packed in time for further refrigeration and shipment (Case study material). The firm strategy of delivering high quality products to consumers at shortest possible lead time and reduced costs has driven Cool Cargo to evaluate the logistics network and identify the gaps. The process has been carried out to take non value adding activities out of the network, thus reducing the costs of process, and adding value into the chain and for sure serving to the interests of consumers providing them with higher service (Christopher, 2005, p.13). This has resulted with introduction of correct handling practices, "temperature monitoring,