This week in CA insights
we wanted to talk about the ‘cold chain’. You have most certainly heard that term used through the years but we wanted to shed some light on the reasons for it and the process. The cold chain is basically a term used to describe how flowers are kept at a low temperature to insure freshness and longer vase life. Essentially, once a flower is cut from the plant it begins to ‘die’. If that flower is kept at temperatures of less than 40 degrees F, its life can be prolonged.
The process starts with the growers, once they have harvested the flowers they are slowly brought down to ideal temps before packing. If the cooling process is ‘rushed’ after they are cut then the flowers could be ‘shocked’ and they will be unsuitable for shipping. Once they are packed the boxes are cooled and shipped via refrigerated truck to our facility in Oxnard, CA. When they are received here, it is in a 45 degree dock area, we check for correct counts and then probe the boxes for temps. Ideally we would like to see the boxes come in at or below 40 degrees.
Once we determine temps the boxes are staged and set up in our pre-cooler. The pre-cooler is located in a cooler at 34 degrees. It is a system that pulls the 34 degree air through the boxes using a vacuum method, that is the reason you will see holes on both sides of the boxes we ship. This process ensures that the flowers ship at the optimum temps. Once they are cooled down they are palletized and placed on our refrigerated trailers to be shipped to Sewell. Since our trucks run non-stop from CA to NJ the trailer temps are very consistent because the doors do not open several times during the trip. Hopefully this this gives you some insight to the cold chain!
