REFRIGERATED SHIPPING CONTAINERS
Shipping containers have become the ’standard’ means by which refrigerated and frozen food products are shipped around a country and between countries. Every person involved in getting products from their point of manufacture to their point of sale is aware that preservation of cold chain integrity is critical to the eating quality, the shelf life and the safety of the food and yet monitoring of temperature in containers is often still managed at a very basic level with a temperature gauge and a chart recorder that relies upon someone at the receival end caring enough to check. Quite often, the food manufacturer who has best understanding of the keeping quality of the product is least informed and least involved in the decision as to whether the level of temperature abuse is acceptable or not.
Data Acquisition Networks, for a comparatively small investment, can fit monitoring equipment to a shipping container that not only monitors temperature routinely and makes the information visible and accessible to everyone who needs to know, but can also monitor other important information as well.
DAN CONTAINER MONITORING EQUIPMENT takes two temperature readings in every container every second. At intervals determined by the user DAN CONTAINER MONITORING EQUIPMENT REPORTS the average, the maximum and the minimum temperature taken. The two temperatures are for ‘internal air temperature’ and ‘indicative product temperature’ the latter being very important in the assessment of the impact of temperature abuse.
DAN CONTAINER MONITORING EQUIPMENT can also monitor and report on door-openings, whether power is applied, whether the refrigeration unit is running or not, battery voltage in the back-up power and even if there is movement in the container.
The primary benefit of the DAN CONTAINER MONITORING SYSTEM is that it does not only rely upon someone caring at the point of receival. DAN data goes to a website where it is accessible under password protection by everyone who has a need to know. Alarms and messages are also sent to multiple points along the cold chain of supply.