Every year, more than one third of all food produced spoils before it can be sold, with fruits and vegetables making up the most of this spoilage. To fight this problem and to set a new standard in the cold chain, Lineage has invested in solutions that optimize the transportation and storage of fresh fruits and vegetables while also helping to eliminate waste; we call this service Lineage Fresh. Jim Henderson, VP of Business Development, on how Lineage is leveraging decades of cold storage experience to ensure fresh fruits and vegetables make it safely to our dinner tables.
What is Lineage Fresh?
Lineage Fresh facilities and team members work hard to ensure fruits, vegetables, and produce stay fresh, all the way to the dinner table.
It's that expertise and focus on this type of product; produce, fruits and vegetables. Lineage Fresh is a combination of three things: Fresh facilities that are specifically designed to accommodate fresh produce, a team of experts that understand this business and value-added services that ensure our customers’ products stay fresh all the way to the consumers’ tables. That's what Lineage Fresh is.
Why was it important for Lineage to provide this service to its customers?
"We created Lineage Fresh in response to feedback from our customers. After bringing Sun Valley Cold Storage and Kloosterboer Group into the Lineage family in 2021, which brought state-of-the-art assets and years of experience in the fresh sector, we hired an expert team and started having conversations with our customers about what servicing their needs means to them. It became very clear that this business is different, the expectations are different and if we wanted our customers to feel comfortable trusting their products with us, then we would need to create a service that’s entirely focused on handling, storing and transporting fresh produce."
What’s special about a Lineage Fresh facility?
"Lineage’s Fresh warehouses are unique because they maintain multiple unique temperature zones within each facility. A lot of our facilities have huge rooms of 10,000 plus pallets being held at that same temperature but there’s a different philosophy with Fresh. For Fresh facilities, we need multiple zones for various products with different temperature requirements. In addition, the facilities must provide value-added services like repackaging, cool treatment, fumigation and other services that these commodities require. Lastly, in terms of infrastructure, it’s essential to have ethylene scrubbers to ensure products stay fresh. These are services that frozen facilities generally do not need, whereas they’re crucial for a Lineage Fresh facility."
What are some of the key differentiators that make Lineage Fresh the best choice for its customers?
"Our soon-to-open Savannah Fresh facility, for example, is less than five miles from the port. That port proximity is key, especially when handling fruits and vegetables. The size and scope of our network is also a huge advantage to our customers, allowing them to get more products into more markets than ever before.
At the end of the day, you could have all those things; the infrastructure, port proximity, all the temperature zones, but the most important thing is having the expertise and the focus to manage the product through that supply chain. Our Lineage Fresh team is second-to-none when it comes to managing these products."
What value-added services does Lineage Fresh provide to help keep fruits and vegetables fresh?
- Fumigation
- Precooling
- Re-pack & Bagging
- Customs Bonded Facilities/CBP
- Restacking, Reconditioning and Restyling
- What’s next for Lineage Fresh?
"The future of Lineage Fresh is global. Right now, we’re focused on making sure we have the end-market prepared here in the US and Europe. In addition to our expansion in Swedesboro, NJ coming online in January 2023, along with Lineage Fresh Savannah, we are speaking to customers about additional locations in the Gulf West Coast in the US. Then, if you take a look at our facility footprint, you can see we’re putting the pieces together to provide global Fresh solutions for our customers to be able to manage their products, reduce delays, extend shelf life, keep products fresher throughout the supply chain and get them to market faster," stated Henderson.
For more information:
Jim Henderson
Lineage
Tel: +1 800 678 7271
www.lineagelogistics.com