What are the difficulties in cold chain home delivery?

According to the investigation and research of the Cold Chain Logistics Professional Committee of the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, China's cold chain logistics has reached a certain bottleneck period, with decreasing profits, saturated markets in some regions, and severe price competition among cold chain peers. So, in this situation, facing the blue ocean field of "cold chain home delivery", with such huge market prospects, why hasn't anyone touched this cake yet? After investigation, it was found that many companies actually want to get a share of this field, but there are some difficulties in operation:

Firstly, e-commerce companies have long coveted fresh food, but they only consider that in order to enter the fresh food industry, they must first solve the problem of cold chain distribution. However, this construction is difficult and requires too much investment (cold storage, refrigerated trucks), so they have no choice but to give up. Like JD.com, although its general cargo logistics system is fully equipped and its customer network resources are abundant, the cold chain logistics system is still blank. According to Shang Lijun, JD.com even once wanted to do pharmaceutical e-commerce business, but it was also unable to do so due to the need for temperature controlled transportation of some drugs.

Secondly, third-party cold chain logistics companies are also facing difficulties in the "cold chain home delivery" business, as this requires too high standards for distribution outlets. Originally, cold chain delivery was only carried out between suppliers and sales outlets, but now it has to be specific to each household. Moreover, a large proportion of consumers live in government departments, universities, family homes, and upscale residential areas, making it difficult for cold chain logistics companies to enter and deliver goods. At present, most express delivery companies have established distribution stations in residential areas, where ordered goods can be delivered centrally and customers can call to pick them up. However, currently cold chain logistics companies do not have such distribution capabilities.

Furthermore, due to the characteristics of "cold chain home delivery" being small batches, multiple batches, multiple varieties, and multiple temperature zones, this also poses new challenges for delivery. If refrigerated trucks are used for delivery, the problem of multiple varieties and multiple temperature zones is difficult to solve, and frequent opening and closing of doors during transportation will inevitably affect the temperature of products in the vehicle. According to Shang Lijun, some companies have started trying to solve this problem by combining box trucks with customized refrigerated containers.