Cold storage providers and distributors are always looking for ways to cut carbon footprints and boost the bottom line. 

For cold storage companies and 3PLs, energy is typically the second-highest operating cost behind labor. Technology can play an important role in combating rising energy costs by cutting consumption and helping cold chain operators identify their weak points.  

Ndustrial, a software and services provider, is one of the few companies featured on Lineage’s website, for helping the world’s largest – and newly publicly-traded – cold storage provider save millions in energy and associated costs.

Technology in Cold Foods Distribution

On this episode, we’re talking technology in cold foods distribution with Jason Massey, CEO and co-founder of Ndustrial, and Damaris Grütter, director of U.S. & Canadian markets at Stoecklin Logistics.

Listen to more From the Cold Corner podcasts.

The North Carolina-based company worked with traditional manufacturing clients building out their machine learning software, said Jason Massey, CEO and co-founder of Ndustrial. 

The Ndustrial team soon realized cold storage and food production facilities had unique factors that fit well with their model. 

 “It's very energy intensive but it actually does have a very flexible load that you can work with. You can really turn these things into assets for the grid if you get to a higher level of controllability,” Massey said. “I never thought we'd be experts in blast freezing chicken breasts. But here we are, and it's been an amazing journey. There's no lack of energy management software (EMS) on the marketplace, but we kept looking at all the different ones and they really just didn't handle production very well – the widget being made, the food being frozen – and so built it ourselves,” he said. “We call the back end platform Contxt. We really needed to contextualize the production, the blast freezing, the freezing and its relationship to the energy intensity and consumption of that facility.”

With over 90 years of experience, Georgia-based Stoecklin starts by analyzing their clients’ needs to define a strategy that often includes automation.

The company uses proprietary software that is “a highly standardized and state of the art warehouse management system which tracks and records all the movement from any product that is transported or resorted by the system,” said Damaris Grutter, VP and managing director. “We have decades of experience in this field for temperature-controlled environments and for automated logistic solutions.” 

Editor’s note: After recording the podcast, Ndustrial was informed they will not receive the DOE grant due to a technicality. The company says it remains committed to improving the efficiency of cold chain operations and looks forward to furthering research in this area.

To hear more about tech in cold foods distribution, listen to the podcast in the player above or download it from wherever you get your podcasts.