How to Prevent Food Waste and Spoilage in Shipping

How to Prevent Food Waste and Food Spoilage in Shipping

Food safety and freshness in shipping are of utmost importance to keep the consumers safe and your business booming. In addition to causing potential food poisoning, food spoilage can also cause a threat to the food shipping business as a whole. This has been one of the challenges faced by food shippers most times. 

To curb food wastage and food spoilage when shipping, read on to find out how in this article.

Preventing Food Wastage and Food Spoilage in Shipping

To prevent food waste and food spoilage when shipping abroad, there are measures you need to put in place to ensure your foodstuffs are safe till they get to their final destination. 

Here are some of the best practices that shippers and courier companies should take into consideration to make sure the food item arrives in the best possible shape and form.

1. Good Packaging

Good packaging design is one of the ways of preventing food wastage or spoilage for exporting. Do not expose your food to air or light as it can alter the quality of the food, especially dairy products, and meat. There are quite a few options to cushion and support your food items especially, perishable foods. Below are ways to improve the packaging to prevent food spoilage; 

• Use polystyrene foam boxes to pack your food items. These boxes are usually cardboard on the outside while the inside walls are thick and expanding.

• Polystyrene cut sheets are also durable to use. The sheets work almost the same way as the polystyrene foam box walls but can be adjusted to fit any box. They are less expensive than Styrofoam.
• Insulated liners are another option to use. They can be tightly wrapped around the perishable food and packers can fill in any extra space with other types of packaging.

Additionally, check out for pests and weevils when packing your food items, especially, rice and beans to them being spoiled by the pest before getting to their destination. 

1. Handle your Foodstuffs Packages with Care

Rough handling sometimes can cause food to spoil which will eventually lead to wastage. Be sure to handle your food with care before shipping as good handling help put your food in good shape till it reaches its final consumer, especially crunchy food item such as dried fish. Poor handling brings about vulnerability. 

1. Choose a Reliable Food Carrier

To prevent your food from being spoiled or wasted, it has to reach the consumer in no time and it is solely dependent on the carrier doing its job well. That makes choosing the right carrier an extremely important decision. Look for a reliable food shipping company like Terminal Africa to help transport your foodstuffs for shipping on time and it will be worth your investment. 

Delay in delivery can be a great concern when food shipping because the longer the delay the higher the risk of food being spoiled and wasted.

1. Opt for a quick shipping option

Delay, they say is dangerous. Another factor that can influence or affect the speed of food shipping and delivery is how fast the ship will reach its destination. Enzymes that occur naturally in packed food can cause spoilage to them if the shipping takes too long.  Depending on your time window for the product to be delivered, two-day shipping may be the best option for you as it is fast enough and will cost a lot less.

1. Avoid shipping perishable food.

Perishable foods are not advisable to ship abroad because they are prone to spoilage and waste. The enzymes that occur naturally in perishable foods such as fruits and vegetables are likely to cause spoilage if it is long overdue for consumption before it gets to the consumer. Do not ship perishable food, rather opt for dry food items in grains and powdered form.

Factors that Cause Food Spoilage and Waste in Shipping

Here are factors that contribute to food spoilage and wastage.

• Exposure of food items to air or light.
• Poor or inadequate packaging
• Poor handling of food items before shipping. It may create weaknesses to spoilage.
• Pests, either by getting past packaging or not being adequately removed before packaging. They introduce micro-organisms that damage food.

For all these factors, time and temperature also have a massive impact on them. The longer the food is exposed to air, pests, enzymes, light, and micro-organisms the higher the chances of spoilage. Most times, higher temperatures often accelerate these processes.

Export to Canada With Terminal Africa: The Best in Foodstuffs Shipping

If you’re looking for cheap and reliable means to export to Canada and other International countries,Terminal Africa is one of the best in providing ultimate shipping solutions with the primary aim of working hand in hand with both the shipper and carriers to deliver food in good form and to reduce food waste.

Conclusion

The significant food spoilage and wastage in the food supply chain and shipping has grown to become a thing of concern and measures have been put in place to curb this menace.

 In this article, we looked at how to prevent food spoilage and wastage in shipping and the factors that contribute to it. With a goal to help prevent food waste in the shipping process, Terminal Africa can be your ideal choice for shipping needs.