An IoT solution to guarantee food safety

The food industry is relentlessly faced with many constant challenges, from limited sourcing options to ever-increasing prices. Another persistent challenge is the extremely high wastage rate of perishable goods. 

It is calculated that about one-third of all food that is produced for human consumption is wasted every year. Whilst food safety procedures are rigorous and regulatory standards keep getting tougher, most wastage comes because of improper food temperatures during transport or storage.   

With temperature monitoring being key to compliance, many delivery and logistics companies invest a lot of time and money to ensure appropriate food conditions and monitoring. Most, however, still depend on manual temperature monitoring, continuous checks, and manual intervention. And as is true for any manual method, this is very susceptible to human error at every stage – from data collection to communication, from administration to analysis.

The foodie challenges

Ensuring optimum temperature conditions in cold storage facilities, freezers, delivery trucks, loading bays and places like supermarkets and hypermarkets, is fundamental to any serious player in the food industry. However, having constant manual monitoring and surveillance of perishable food is expensive and subject to human error. The challenge is therefore to automate food temperature monitoring of multiple assets simultaneously, possibly located at different sites, enabling remote visibility and triggering human intervention whenever necessary. 

The IoT solution for the food industry

melita.io provides an IoT-based solution to monitor food temperatures and to provide an unprecedented degree of control, accuracy, and safety, not only saving the food industry thousands but also making the planet more sustainable.

Wireless smart sensors are set up inside freezers, cold storage rooms, delivery trucks, etc to constantly monitor the temperature at which the food is stored.

Using melita.io’s LoRaWAN gateway or NB-IoT network, the sensors transmit the real-time temperature to a central platform that is easy to interpret and is accessible from anywhere in the world. In some advanced scenarios, the solution can also adjust the storage facility’s temperature automatically without requiring human interference. 

The sensors can also be set to trigger an alarm should the set temperature fail to be reached, thus enabling operators to act long before the perishables are spoilt or contaminated.

melita.io’s cloud-based management portal enables operators to remotely override controls, set new temperature triggers, provision new sensors and much more. Instant notifications are also sent on the mobile devices of management members, so that problems requiring human intervention can be rectified as soon as possible, therefore mitigating the loss of perishable products and loss of goods.

The benefits of IoT cold chain food monitoring are numerous, but simply put – it maximises profits, decreases wastage, improves management and ultimately helps make our planet more sustainable.

To learn more about how melita.io can help your business take advantage of the power of the Internet of Things, contact us.