Live lobsters were dying in transit until East Coast Seafood began tagging shipments with time and temperature monitors. Source: PakSense Inc.

Tad Pawlowski had a problem with the live lobsters he was shipping to Europe: most of them were dead before they cleared customs.

The quality control director for Lynn, MA-based East Coast Seafood knew someone was dropping the cold-chain ball; The question was, who? His firm delivers thousands of pounds of premium lobsters each day to Boston’s Logan Airport or JFK in New York for transport to customers in Europe, and pinpointing where the problem occurred posed a challenge. The solution: a label with a microchip to record time and temperature was rubber-banded around the claw of one lobster in each batch. Once the shipment reached Europe, colleagues on the ground used inexpensive readers to capture time and temperature data that was then downloaded to an Excel spreadsheet. The file was e-mailed to Pawlowski, who quickly pinpointed the problem: the crustaceans were spending a lot of time on the tarmac at Miami International Airport. Changes were made, and the lobsters lived to see the inside of a boiling pot of French water.

Pawlowski was one of the first users of labels introduced by Boise-ID-based PakSense Inc. in late 2006. He had deployed other temperature monitors, but they were bulky, expensive, and had to be mailed back. “How can I fix the problem if I get the information a month after the problem occurred?” he asks rhetorically.

PakSense’s nano-scale and moderately priced labels soon will be reusable, as well, according to CEO David Light. Other quality indicators such as ethylene gas emissions from ripening produce and vibration may be measured in future versions, but for now the firm is concentrating on flagging temperature spikes. Temperature variances of 30˚F are not uncommon in refrigerated trailers, so positioning thermal sensors close to the product and in multiple locations provides a more precise indication of quality issues. “There’s more trust in the shipping process than there should be,” Light says. “When ice cream and meat companies use independent truckers, they’re relying on the integrity of their shippers” to follow protocols for cargo that can be worth six figures.

PakSense labels are “about the size of a Triscuit cracker” and come in a food-grade plastic bag, says Lou Pritchett, office manager and IT coordinator at Schug Carneros Estate Winery in Sonoma, CA. She began using the labels a year ago to head off shipping abuses that lead to returned product and lost customers. Her shipping department activates the tags by simply bending the corner, then affixes the bag to cases or pallets, which can be worth as much as $16,000. Wholesale customers appreciate the quality assurance, Pritchett reports, and the labels are being used to help Schug refine processes, such as gauging the effectiveness of pallet covers and gaining insight into conditions in its own cellars.

About four out of five labels are mailed back to Schug, thanks to a large orange sticker and self-addressed, stamped envelope attached near the label, she says. By comparing recorded data with shipping routes, she knows when the container ship passed through the Panama Canal or entered the Sea of Japan. One insight gleaned: “We don’t recommend using railroads.”

The technology has gotten a boost from some retailers who mandate the labels on perishables, PakSense’s Light says. The first was Albertson’s, and “there are times Albertson’s uses our technology internally” to monitor conditions in their DCs and in stores. v

For more information:

Amy Childress, PakSense Inc., 208-489-9026, amy.childress@paksense.com