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Point of View: Managing the Cold Chain 101 |
| Written by Amanda Ryder | |||
Your imported flowers can travel a long way before they reach your shop. By the time you pull your blooms off the delivery truck, chances are, almost a week has passed since your flowers were plucked from the fields. What can you do in your shop to help your flowers live long and prosper?
Staby is a strong advocate for cold chain management and has coauthored an industry-wide recognized white paper on improving the cold chain for cut flowers. (Read Dr. Staby's paper. ) Simply put, Staby says florists should be practising cold chain management to reduce shrinkage, make their flowers last longer and as a result, have more satisfied customers. When it comes to maintaining the cold chain, Staby highlights a number of things that florists can do in order to help their blooms stay cold. One common mistake is made when florists process the blooms. After recutting the stems and inserting the flowers in solution, many florists leave the bucket to sit out so the flowers can drink the water. Instead, Staby recommends that florists put the buckets right back in the cooler. Flowers need at least an hour of hydration before being used in a design or put out for sale. He says the flowers will hydrate just as efficiently in the cooler as they will outside the cooler. “There is a misconception that ‘I’ll only have them out of cooler for a few hours so it won’t make a difference.’ But a few can hours can make a difference,” says Staby. He also warns that moving the flowers in and out of the cooler produces condensation on the flowers, which increases the risk of botrytis. Staby says florists also need to be aware of their cooler settings. “A lot of retail coolers come preset at a given temperature, which is usually 5,6 or 7 C.” At these settings, flowers will deteriorate two to three times faster. He recommends that florists contact their refrigeration supplier to see if the cooler can run effectively at a lower temperature. If so, the manufacturer should make the proper adjustments. Delivery trucks can be another important element of cold chain management at the retail level. Staby suggests simple things like painting delivery trucks white or silver instead of dark colours. Retailers should also check in with their wholesaler to ensure they are doing their part to keep the chain intact. One way is to ask your wholesaler questions, but Staby says, better yet, check yourself. “Visit the wholesaler and take a temperature probe with you,” says Staby. “If you want to know what’s happening to the flower, then measure the temperature.” Small temperature probes can be purchased for around $20 (Staby recommends the PDT 300). He says the best way to gauge the temperature of a cooler is to test a bucket of water. “A bucket of water provides an accurate picture of cooler temperature,” Staby says. The reason for this is that when a cooler door opens and closes, the air temperature fluctuates, but the water temperature does not. Staby finishes by saying that when it comes to maintaining the cold chain, it’s a group effort. Staby is currently working with others to develop a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag that will go inside flower boxes and take constant temperature readings to predict how much flower life was lost as the flowers travel from grower to retailer. “Eventually, we want to make it as cost effective as possible for the receiver to understand what happened to the flowers.” Each month, this department will present a new point of view to give a fresh perspective on the floral industry. |
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Care & handling: Fresh Ideas for 2006 by Gayle Smith | 04/03 Canadian Florist Online by Canadian Florist staff | 05/05 Care & Handling: Work Smarter by Gayle Smith | 04/02 Care & Handling: November/December 2007 by Gayle Smith | 11/01 Care & Handling: October 2007 by Gayle Smith | 10/01 |
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