Cold Chain Logistics: Farm to Flight

A shrimp's journey from harvest pond to international buyer involves more handoffs, temperature transitions, and documentation checkpoints than most people realise. Getting it right every time is what separates reliable exporters from unreliable ones.

Harvest happens at night or early morning, when temperatures are lowest. Shrimp move immediately into insulated bins with a 1:1 shrimp-to-ice ratio and are transported to our processing facility within two hours of harvest — a strict internal standard.

After processing, product is blast-frozen at -35°C to rapidly lock in quality, then moved to -18°C holding cold storage. From there, export orders are packed into insulated master cartons with gel ice or dry ice depending on transit time, and transported to Kolkata or Chennai airport in refrigerated vehicles.

Every vehicle and storage unit in this chain carries a temperature logger, and we review the full temperature curve for each shipment after delivery — not just the endpoints. A brief excursion above -18°C during a vehicle changeover is invisible if you only check departure and arrival temperatures, but it shows up clearly in a continuous log, and it's exactly the kind of gap that causes quality complaints months later.

Airport handling is often the weakest link in the chain, since cargo can sit on a tarmac or in an unrefrigerated holding area between customs clearance and loading. We work only with freight forwarders who guarantee cold-chain continuity through airport handling, and we've walked away from cheaper freight options in the past after temperature logs showed gaps at this stage.

Air freight to EU destinations typically takes 10–14 hours. Throughout transit, our export documentation travels with the shipment — health certificate, Certificate of Origin, packing list, and cold chain log — ensuring smooth customs clearance at the destination port.