Enhancing the Resilience of Food Cold Chain Logistics Through Digital Transformation: A Case Study of China

Introduction

The food cold chain was highlighted by a study on food loss in 2009, and the global cold chain industry has gained a lot of market share in the past decade due to the rapid increase in demand for fresh frozen food with the help of government support and structural innovation (Qian et al., 2022). Cold Chain Systems is a specialized department of the food system supply chain whose purpose is to ensure food safety and reduce food waste due to changes in physical and chemical properties. It is reactive and preventive and meets consumer requirements for safety, freshness and quality standards for perishable foods (Zhu et al., 2022). According to the report, China exported 3.7474 million tons of aquatic seafood and 6.9247 million tons of fresh or refrigerated vegetables in 2020 (Statistics, 2022a). In 2021, the total output of fresh and refrigerated meat in China reached 32.982 million tons, and the long-term output value was maintained at about 24% (Statistics, 2022b), and the cold chain is crucial for national economic development. If the cold chain is not handled properly, the quality of food can be reduced, which may cause illness or even death (Chen et al., 2022).

The global cold chain logistics market was worth almost 248.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 and is expected to exceed 410 billion U.S. dollars by 2028, which is based on the 2028 values and the compound annual growth rate from 2021 to 2028 of seven percent (Mazareanu, 2021), which has a huge market. However, the development of the cold chain has been limited by COVID-19, with 73% of people in the freight transportation and logistics services industry believing that COVID-19 has an impact on their jobs, according to a 2020 global study (Department, 2020). Novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread rapidly around the world and has affected more than 70 million people in 191 countries and territories between 2019 and 2020, resulting in more than 1.7 million deaths, declared a pandemic (Okubo et al., 2021). The main mode of transmission of the virus is human-to-human transmission through small droplets produced by breathing, sneezing or coughing, and it is easy to fall on food surfaces, food packaging or door handles, elevator switches, and other objects for a while. The temperature of these objects and their characteristics are crucial for the impact of the virus (Mahmoud, 2020).

The impact of the epidemic on the food supply chain is mainly reflected in transportation and labor availability as well as input supply and technology development (Chitrakar et al., 2021). A key issue in the COVID-19 pandemic is that the network operation of the supply chain involves multiple players, and both the management process and production activities face uncertainties about changes in internal and external demand, such as a large-scale conflict between the sudden increase in demand caused by panic purchases and the capacity of regional logistics services (Fu et al., 2022). To overcome the problem of unreasonable distribution and then reduce unnecessary personal injury and loss, the government has carried out scientific emergency supplies supply, some authors have also studied cold chain emergency supply methods from the aspects of highway scheduling optimization (Yang et al., 2022). This chapter will use CiteSpace to focus on some keywords in the cold chain under the situation of COVID-19, like food safety, sustainability and traceability.

Figure 1.

The analysis of cold chain keywords from CiteSpace

Besides, three questions were put forward and some Chinese questionnaire data and cases will be provided to refer to:

• 1.

  What additional requirements does cold chain transportation require compared with ordinary supply chain?

• 2.

  Does and how does digital transformation create value for cold supply chain transportation?

• 3.

  How does the added value of digital cold supply chain deal with food safety?

There have been many chapters on the theory and model of the way to enhance the resilience of food chain logistics through digital transformation, but there are few questionnaire data from the customer’s perspective. Questionnaires and case studies will be used to further analyze how the cold chain could enhance resilience in the context of the pandemic.