‘Last Mile’ Industry: How Standards Can Help Keep Products Safe During Food Delivery

The industry highlighted the need for this best practice framework in 2017 with the publication of the publicly available specification PAS 1018:2017—“Specification for indirect, temperature-controlled refrigerated delivery services. Land transport of refrigerated parcels with intermediate transfer.” Since its publication, the standard has been adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and incorporated into a new standard published last year, ISO 23412:2020 : Indirect, temperature-controlled refrigerated delivery services — Land transport of parcels with intermediate transfer.

This standard provides organizations within the global last mile industry an internationally recognized and harmonized framework that demonstrates industry best practices to ensure that temperature-sensitive products are stored and distributed safely in order to protect the end consumer. The standard provides a practical breakdown of the essential elements of process management and risk control of temperature-sensitive products for last mile businesses by clearly articulating terms and definitions, refrigerated delivery attributes, acceptable conditions for operating sites, refrigerated enclosures, cold stores and cooling materials, transportation networks, geographical routing systems through to information exchange, the acceptance and transfer of chilled or frozen parcels, up to the final delivery of the parcel to its final destination.

An example of how industry sectors have leveraged and benefited from the use of ISO standards in the past would be cargo or freight containers that industries rely on to transport their goods around the globe. When containers were initially adopted as a means for shipping, there were many different sizes, types, and corner fittings used. This presented a variety of risks and challenges to the transport industry; the various types of containers, all with different dimensions and design specifications, being loaded onto cargo ships, railcars, and truck beds, caused a high number of cargo containers to become loose and fall off.

As a result, in August 1989, British Standards Institution (BSI) published BS (British Standard) 3951-1-1: Freight containers, General, specification for Series 1 freight containers: Classification, dimensions and ratings, which was adopted by ISO in April 1996 as ISO 668: “Series 1 freight containers—Classification, dimensions, and ratings.” This standard has been updated over the years and is still used to ensure that all cargo and freight containers meet the internationally adopted classification, dimensions, and ratings, so now the various types of containers are all manufactured to the same specifications and fit on cargo ships, railcars, and truck beds like Lego pieces.

Continued Protection

The e-commerce and last mile industries are growing at an exciting pace. And, throughout the last mile industry, those risks that are present today related to the safe and hygienic distribution of temperature-sensitive groceries can be managed through the use of standards to better protect the products and consumers for tomorrow. Consider standards as a method that describes the best way of doing something, such as manufacturing a product, supplying materials, and managing a process or behavior. Voluntary and consensus-based standards are the distilled wisdom of people with expertise in their subject matter, experts who know the needs of the industries and organizations they represent.

Coole is director of food and retail supply chain at BSI Americas. Reach him at [email protected].