Ensuring cold chain reliability: a vital issue for food safety and health
In sensitive sectors like healthcare, catering, and agri-food, maintaining the cold chain is a crucial factor for quality, safety, and compliance. From production to storage, every link matters: a simple temperature variation can compromise a vaccine's effectiveness, spoil food, or lead to significant economic losses. To address these challenges, businesses are turning to smart monitoring solutions that ensure complete traceability and real-time alerts in case of anomalies.
Why is cold chain monitoring important?
The cold chain involves maintaining items at specific temperatures to limit their deterioration and prevent the development of harmful microorganisms. This applies to various sectors such as catering, agri-food, and healthcare, particularly for medicines like vaccines.
The cold chain applies to all stages of the process, from production to storage, including transportation. A break in the cold chain or overexposure to cold can have serious consequences and lead to health risks.
Mastering the cold chain is essential for:
- public health: it is crucial to ensure proper preservation of medication to guarantee its quality and effectiveness,
- food safety: preventing microbiological contamination and avoiding food poisoning,
- food quality: preserving characteristics such as color, taste, and texture,
- economic aspect: reducing losses and extending shelf life,
- environmental management: optimizing resource utilization.
Use cases: which sensors for which daily applications?
Food Production
Food production transforms raw materials into finished products. Monitoring temperature and humidity is essential to ensure that raw materials are handled under appropriate conditions and maintain their quality and integrity.
In storage facilities, temperature and humidity monitoring ensures that products remain in optimal conditions to prevent deterioration, contamination, or loss of flavor.
Continuous monitoring from production to catering services helps identify any deviation from ideal conditions, allowing for quick corrective action to preserve product quality.
This monitoring system is possible thanks to the EM320TH sensor. This temperature and humidity sensor can be used:
- indoors, in refrigeration or freezing units,
- in refrigerated transport vehicles,
- in logistics transport vehicles,
- in schools,
- in outdoor spaces,
- in storage areas.
- Digital sensor
- From -30°C to 60°C
- Food grade support: AF10-125-150 support
The TS201 sensor also allows temperature monitoring for food safety.
- DS18B20 sensor
- From -40°C to 125°C
Research & Development and Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
Temperature and humidity monitoring helps researchers maintain the stability and efficacy of drugs and experimental formulations.
Continuous monitoring from the laboratory to healthcare centers helps identify any deviation from ideal conditions, allowing for quick corrective action to preserve product quality.
The TS201 and TS30X temperature sensors allow for the implementation of a monitoring system in the pharmaceutical sector.
- DS18B20 sensor
- From -40°C to 125°C
- PT100 sensor
- B05-125-200: -40 °C to 125 °C
- AF10-125-150: -40 °C~125 °C
- A05-500-150: -50 °C to 500 °C
- Food grade support
How our sensors can help you meet requirements and regulations?
Milesight sensors offered by Sparwan enable businesses to comply with the strictest standards, while simplifying temperature monitoring and traceability. Thanks to their certifications and food-contact adapted design, these sensors ensure total control over storage and transport conditions.
-
Helps businesses meet HACCP requirements: the HACCP system (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) is essential for food safety. By accurately monitoring temperature and humidity, they help maintain the necessary conditions to prevent food contamination and ensure product quality.
-
EN12830 standard certification: Milesight sensors are EN12830 certified. This standard ensures food safety, meets regulatory requirements, builds confidence, and optimizes operational efficiency. Our sensors are therefore ideal products for use in the transport, storage, and distribution of chilled, frozen, or deep-frozen products such as food and medical items.
-
21 CFR Part 11B Recording: this compliance ensures that the sensor meets the requirements of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for electronic records and signatures.
-
Food-grade materials: Milesight sensors are made from food-contact appropriate materials, thus ensuring the absence of harmful substances in the food processing environment. This is essential for guaranteeing food safety regarding materials in contact with food.
Advantages of Milesight sensors
Milesight monitoring system sensors:
- are easy to install, they can be moved without difficulty;
- are powered by lithium batteries with a lifespan of up to 10 years;
- automatically record and report temperature data;
- send real-time alert notifications if the temperature exceeds predefined thresholds.
The devices operate with LoRaWAN® technology, which allows for:
-
Long range: data transmission range up to 2 km in urban areas and 15 km in rural areas.
-
Low power consumption: IoT devices running on LoRaWAN® can operate with small batteries for years, reducing the need for frequent maintenance.
-
Highly scalable: LoRaWAN® networks are highly scalable, allowing for the connection of up to 2,000 nodes from a single gateway.
-
Secure and reliable : LoRaWAN® ensures secure data transmission through AES-128 encryption, unique keys, authentication, message integrity checks, a secure joining process, and regular key updates.
Sparwan, your partner for cold chain monitoring
Our "Cold Chain" range includes ready-to-use LoRaWAN sensors, designed to ensure continuous temperature and humidity monitoring during refrigerated transport or storage. Equipped with robust IP65/IP67 casings, food-grade PT100 probes, and an internal data logger, these devices guarantee optimal reliability in demanding environments.
NFC configuration, automatic PDF exports, and real-time alerts simplify commissioning and supervision, from the logistics dock to the laboratory. This secures your sensitive products without heavy maintenance, in full compliance with the strictest standards and regulatory requirements.
Discover our range of products “Cold Chain”
Our teams are already supporting cold chain professionals in their development in France, allowing them to:
- reduce energy costs by identifying and correcting energy waste,
- improve energy efficiency by optimizing processes and equipment,
- comply with regulations such as HACCP or energy efficiency standards,
- make informed decisions based on concrete data transmitted in real time and in-depth analyses.
Our teams are available to advise you on your future projects and support you via our technical support. Contact us!
