In recent years, cold chain logistics has gradually attracted attention and become a blue ocean in the logistics field. With the rising heat of cold chain logistics, many giant companies have started their actions in the cold chain field.

Cold chain logistics should have presented a prosperous scene, but all along, the development process of China's cold chain logistics is not ideal, there are still many problems.

Three major problems faced by cold chain logistics:cold chain cold storage distribution, cost and talent

China's cold chain logistics started late and there is a big gap compared with developed countries. In terms of circulation rate and pre-cooling, it is far behind western developed countries. The development of cold chain logistics in China faces the following difficulties.

First, the distribution of cold storage is uneven.cold warehouse According to the statistics of the China Cold Storage Union, the national cold storage capacity in 2019 was 46 million tons, of which Shandong, Shanghai and Guangdong have a faster development rate and the cold storage capacity is at the forefront, while the development of the southwest region is slower, and there is an imbalance in the distribution of cold storage.

Secondly, the input cost of cold chain is high. Cold chain logistics is not only simple refrigeration, but also need to maintain constant temperature, and its cost is higher than room temperature logistics and transportation. Moreover, the cost of cold chain logistics is not only a single logistics cost, but also need to consider the product cost of the source of product quality, as well as due to the different quality of logistics services and the comprehensive cost of cargo loss, cargo difference and so on.

China's fruit and vegetable production inland provinces and cities market cold storage capacity is low, resulting in cold chain logistics in the production of the source of the lack of pre-cooling, resulting in the source of the "broken chain". If fruits and vegetables are transported in the source of "broken chain", then the quality of fruits and vegetables may not be guaranteed when they arrive at the destination, which leads to an increase in the transportation cost of fruits and vegetables. In addition, from the perspective of the cold chain logistics industry chain, the middle and lower reaches of the cold chain storage and circulation links will also increase the cost of cold chain transportation. Data show that the profit margin of room temperature logistics and transportation in China is higher than that of cold chain logistics and transportation, which does not play a great role in improving the phenomenon of reducing the high cost of cold chain logistics.

Thirdly, there is a shortage of human resources in cold chain logistics. Cold chain logistics has high professional requirements on technology, including cold chain transportation equipment and the construction of cold chain logistics informationization system, etc., all of which need professionals to complete. However, the cultivation speed of professional logistics talents in China does not match the development speed of the logistics industry, thus limiting the development progress of cold chain logistics.

Three Opportunities to Help Cold Chain Logistics Move Forward

Although cold chain logistics faces many difficulties in the process of development, there are still many enterprises entering the field for layout, and there are opportunities in the cold chain logistics industry.

First of all, improve the cold chain standardization. It is not easy to improve the standardization of cold chain logistics, especially to standardize the front end of the cold chain, the main consideration is food safety. Therefore, cold chain logistics companies need to strictly control transportation products to reduce the occurrence of food safety incidents. For example, SF Cold Chain Logistics has already extended its cold chain service to the front end and provided high-quality cold storage conditions at the front end, and then transported the products to users through high-speed channels, which ensures the quality of the products. If cold chain logistics enterprises can improve the degree of transport standardization, then it can help the development of the industry, making it a big step forward.

Secondly, try "decentralization" and the model of front warehouse. With the emergence of concepts such as "new retail" and "retail revolution", it can be seen that the business model is changing. Therefore, cold chain logistics enterprises can try "decentralization" and front warehouse mode. After all, de-stocking can lead to changes in the business model, and can also reduce the cost of investment to a certain extent.

Third, build a cold chain ecosystem. For large enterprises in cold chain logistics, it is mainly to improve the supply chain services, which helps the development of the enterprise.

To summarize, cold chain logistics has huge development space. While seizing the opportunities, enterprises should be clear about the challenges they may encounter in the process of industry development.

Facing a market scale of hundreds of billions, what challenges will cold chain logistics face?

On the one hand, cold chain logistics enterprises are fighting separately and lack integration ability. At present, China's cold chain logistics enterprises are small and scattered, with a low degree of concentration. In order to compete for market share, domestic cold chain enterprises are fighting separately, unable to form a scale effect, which will easily drag down the development progress of the whole cold chain logistics industry.

On the other hand, the informationization level of cold chain logistics is low. Cold chain logistics is different from ordinary logistics, which has higher requirements on hardware level, such as the application of advanced information technology such as satellite positioning, logistics network and mobile Internet to locate the transportation vehicles and monitor the whole process of temperature. However, the overall level of logistics informatization in China is low, and the status of informatization in the cold chain logistics industry is even less optimistic.

Informatization is a necessary path for the development of cold chain logistics. If the level of informatization is low, cold chain logistics may have problems such as information blockage and resource allocation, which leads to the lack of transparency of the whole cold chain logistics process, thus reducing the transportation efficiency to a certain extent. Therefore, how to improve the level of informatization is a major challenge for cold chain logistics enterprises to improve their operational efficiency.

In conclusion, while the cold chain logistics market is expanding rapidly, there are still many problems in the industry that have not yet been solved. As the development trend of cold chain logistics is favorable, the future development not only has the opportunity to appear, but also faces many challenges. Therefore, the cold chain logistics industry needs to break through the current bottlenecks in order to develop and grow. Only in this way can the cold chain logistics industry flourish.