When it comes to the cold chain industry, due to various reasons such as its late start and weak foundation, there is still a large gap between China’s development maturity and foreign cold chain transportation networks. The current “broken chain” problem in all aspects of my country’s cold chain logistics is still serious. . It is estimated that about 12 million tons of fruits and 130 million tons of vegetables are wasted every year due to cold chain “breaks” in my country, with economic losses exceeding 100 billion yuan.
At present, the cold chain transportation rates of aquatic products, meat, fruits and vegetables in my country are 69%, 57%, and 35% respectively, while the average level of these indicators in developed countries is between 80% and 90%. The low refrigerated transportation rate means that most fresh agricultural products cannot be properly insulated, moisturized and refrigerated during transportation, resulting in a large amount of food waste.
However, in recent years, due to the support of policies and demand, my country’s cold chain industry has made great progress. Cold chain logistics has blossomed everywhere, and e-commerce logistics giants such as JD.com, Suning, and SF Express have entered the industry. According to Ping An Securities’ calculations, taking into account the current favorable policy environment and the rapid growth of the cold chain logistics industry, the total size of my country’s cold chain logistics market will be approximately 915.4 billion yuan by 2025.
In the upstream of the industrial chain, the number of refrigerated trucks and the total number of cold storages in my country has been increasing in recent years, and infrastructure has been accelerated. According to statistics from the China Internet of Things Cold Chain Committee, from 2015 to 2019, the number of refrigerated trucks in my country has almost maintained an average growth rate of more than 20%.
In the storage and transportation link in the middle reaches of the industrial chain, due to the lengthy links and complex processes involved, the demand for comprehensive integrated services and digital development has increased, and there are unprecedented opportunities for the transformation and development of the logistics model.
The collision between a new round of cold chain industry construction and LoRa technology
In the storage and transportation links in the middle reaches of the industrial chain, the demand for comprehensive integrated services and digital development has increased significantly. There are two main reasons for this:
First, the cold chain logistics model will develop in the direction of a platform, thereby reducing information asymmetry of resources. Therefore, transportation and warehousing enterprises have begun to transform into a comprehensive cold chain service provider model.
Second, smart cold chain logistics characterized by digitization, informatization, intelligence, and automation has become an important development trend. Smart cold chain logistics uses technologies such as the Internet, Internet of Things, and blockchain to monitor all aspects of circulation in real time, break down information barriers between manufacturers, suppliers, sellers, and consumers, maximize the utilization of cold chain logistics resources, and achieve Food quality and safety can be traced and monitored, and order information and location can be tracked.
The essence of cold chain logistics is the full-process monitoring of temperature and humidity. How to effectively obtain the temperature and humidity during the entire transportation process in real time, and how to track and monitor assets and even their drops and packaging damage have become key links. In recent years, the rapid development of IoT technologies such as LoRa has brought new opportunities to the cold chain logistics industry.
Embedding “positioning communication sensing” capabilities into every smart terminal, LoRa tags can be deployed at various monitoring points according to business needs, collecting temperature, humidity, vibration, light sensing and other data during transportation in real time, and reporting it to the wireless network through the wireless network of the supporting host. The management backend realizes data analysis, processing and storage, and realizes visual monitoring of the entire logistics and transportation process.
Its core functional modules include intelligent hardware (including communication protocols), cloud platform (including open public interfaces), and AI data analysis and decision-making. It combines the latest IoT technologies such as LoRa with its IoT intelligent hardware, positioning, navigation and data The combination of advanced technology and experience in analysis and other fields provides an end-to-end solution for the whole process monitoring of the cold chain industry.
The new round of cold storage and cold chain construction not only faces people’s demand for higher quality food, but also coincides with the rapid development and widespread application of new generation information technologies such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence (AI). It is believed that more emphasis will be placed on environmental control in the future Cold chain logistics will become a key practical area for the application of Internet of Things technology. At that time, cold chain logistics will be a spring scene full of flowers.
Not only cold chain logistics, LoRa applications are blooming everywhere
As a mature Internet of Things connection technology, LoRa has the application characteristics of “self-organization, security, and controllability”, as well as technical characteristics such as long distance, low power consumption, and easy deployment. At the same time, LoRa is also an excellent geolocation technology. Geolocation applications are booming. At present, a complete and prosperous ecosystem has been formed in China, with the number of companies exceeding 2,000. From an application perspective, LoRa has been widely and successfully used in many fields such as smart buildings, smart industrial parks, asset tracking, power and energy management, metering, fire protection, smart agriculture and livestock management, epidemic prevention and control, and medical health. Applications. As LoRa technology develops in the indoor consumer field, its application has also extended to smart home, wearable and other consumer fields.