"Refrigeration operators in all food businesses MUST comply with stringent mandatory requirements for food safety. Food that is left to become unsafe is still extremely dangerous to consumers. Therefore, the rules for safe food management, referred to as HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) have been developed by all the relevant global & national health & safety organisations e.g. WHO, FDA, EU, and national Food Standards agencies. HACCP is adopted across the Western World for everyone involved with food - growers & farmers, manufacturers, transporters, warehousing, retailers, supermarkets, hospitality, catering services, airlines etc.
Critical to the safe keeping of food is maintaining their safe storage at all times prior to being consumed, sold or served - this means in frozen, refrigerated and some ambient environments. Storing at higher temperatures than those recommended significantly shortens shelf-life, or renders it unsafe. This either means it is thrown away, or inadvertently (and sometimes intentionally) it is served.
Using WHO and EU sourced data about the scale of the issues relating to food-borne illnesses in Europe alone:-
* In Europe 44 people fall sick every minute from eating contaminated food, 23 million per year
* 4,700 lose their lives
* Food Waste in Europe is estimated at 143 billion Euros p.a [Source: E.C.]
Temperature compliance becomes a decision between Profit, Consumer Safety, Food Waste. Poor Temperature control leads either to Food Safety issues or Food Wastage.
ALL storage in these chilled environments has to be temperature checked usually 2 or 3 times daily to ensure correct temperatures are maintained; and written records must be taken. To date is largely a manual process.
Supervisors take readings from analogue or digital thermometers in fridges and record them on paper.
Reactive manual processes take valuable time and cause a number of adverse impacts for businesses and for the planet:
No real-time data available - anything that happens between readings (or in night) is unknown
>Manual processes do not alert managers between readings when temperatures get too high; they only discover it afterwards; whatever happens to the food, it's probably too late - active warnings could be 8+ hours late
>Manual processes also give rise to mistakes and made up readings
>Late food safety notification either mean it is too late for food safety and there is a consumer risk, or they have needlessly disposed of the food
>Managers may overcool, using significantly more energy. It could be anything from 5-20% too much energy, as overcooling uses 2.5-4% extra energy, extra cost, extra carbon emission for every 1 Degree C too cold
Why is this important for society?
>Consumers are unnecessarily put at risk, and will become ill
>Business pay more than they need to with extra energy, more food-loss and extra man-time; and they place their business at risk from Environmental health inspections, risking their brand & reputation
>It also means greater energy use, and more unnecessary carbon emissions
Overall, manual monitoring rather than automated continuous monitoring, means more cost (food loss, extra energy, manual labour), higher consumer safety risk, lower safety compliance, greater carbon emissions
Our objectives are:
Provide a low-cost, automated monitoring solution - better, easier, more reliable, more secure, and lower cost than anything available today
That can be used in any country, in any refrigeration/freezing/chilling equipment
That can be set up & installed in minutes, is easy to use, and completely reliable
Which is low cost
Providing a digital monitoring service that's accurate, that automates the tasks, is responsive and alerts businesses (users) as needed, and prevents loss
And tells the owner if temperatures are too high or too low day or night, or the door is left open or is opened too many times, or energy use is too high, or humidity is too high
That helps identify issues and supports preventative maintenance
And will integrate with current ""SMART"" devices, or through sensor variants (electronics boards fitted at manufacture) make equipment ""CONNECTED""
The target is to reduce energy costs by 5+%"
