Virtual Exhibition

Sustainable cold chains

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The virtual exhibition for sustainable cold chains aims to highlight the critical role of cold chains in ensuring food safety and security, access to vaccines, reducing global warming and preventing ozone layer depletion.

The exhibition showcases commercially available cold chain technologies for food and vaccines, mainly targeting applications and equipment with refrigeration and cooling cycles that use ozone and climate-friendly refrigerants and have enhanced energy efficiency characteristics. It also aims to promote game-changing and systemic approaches, relevant initiatives, and not-in-kind solutions to cold chains

These technologies and approaches directly contribute to meeting national obligations under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer including its Kigali Amendment and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Sustainable cold chain contributes to the achievement of many Sustainable Development Goals.

If you also want to demonstrate your sustainable cold chain technologies in this virtual exhibition to inform policy-makers, end-users and the public, this virtual place is for you.

Energy-and-resource efficient solution for storing food products on site


The client – a large industrial kitchen supplying food to large companies – needed an energy-and-resource efficient solution for storing food products on site.
Since the customer is located near the Rhine River in Germany, they can use the groundwater to absorb excess heat and keep the condensation temperature of the chillers below the ambient temperature on warm summer days. The lower the condensation temperature, the higher the chillers' efficiency.
Secon supplies redundant air-cooled chillers to provide cold water to air conditioning units and to subcritical carbon dioxide units used for blast chilling and blast freezing of food. The redundant system ensures reliability of cooling capacity. The chillers use propane (R-290) as a refrigerant gas.
Thanks to this technology, the chillers can keep the outlet temperature at -8°C with low energy consumption. Their Seasonal Energy Performance Ratio (SERP) is more than 4 (i.e., over the year the cooling capacity is 4 times higher than the electrical power consumption).

Delivering food safely from farm to consumer requires suitable temperature-controlled environments throughout the transportation chain. This also applies to pharmaceutical products such as vaccines. The various stages that perishable and temperature-sensitive products pass through to their destination are referred to as the cold chain.

Cold chains play a key role in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals related to ending hunger and poverty, improved food security and nutrition, climate action, sustainable agriculture and fisheries, as well as health and well-being. Efficient, ozone and climate-friendly cold chain helps ensure nutritious and healthy food for all by providing longevity of perishable foods and maintaining food safety, as well as increasing the economic return by securing the food value chain from farmer to consumer. It is also vital for the organization of the global vaccination campaigns against diseases such COVID-19, which require more and new types of vaccine cold chains.

The Sustainable Cold Chain Virtual Expo collects and showcases cold chain equipment with relevant sustainable characteristics, provide access to critical information about the commercially available sustainable cold chain technologies for policy and decision-makers as well as public and private sector end-users, to identify technology options and stay abreast with latest state-of-the-art cold chain technological solutions. It also highlights examples of game-changing approaches to addressing the need for sustainable cold chains from a holistic system perspective.

What a technology provider, user of cold chain technologies or a policy-maker responsible for sustainable development agendas will find in this exhibition:

Technology developer and provider
  • The exhibition is for decision-makers (government, policy makers and end users) who use cold chain technologies.
  • It accepts and shows the technologies with a ‘cool factor’, your offer can be among them.
  • The exhibition is free. Check the criteria and if your offer meets them, submit your nomination here
Users of cold chain technologies
  • The exhibition displays examples of available state-of-the-art technologies in cold chains.
  • These technologies are compliant with basic environmental performance criteria and help to implement your government’s policy objectives
National governments, and ozone or climate officers
  • The exhibition showcases sustainable cold chain solutions currently available on the market.
  • These solutions can be included in national phase-out strategies and plans for the Montreal Protocol and Kigali Amendment.
  • They can contribute to your NDCs under the Paris Agreement and many SDGs.
  • The companies from your country can also showcase their technologies worldwide.
Food, climate community and public
  • The exhibition displays technological and broader solutions that help reduce food loss and waste.
  • The selected technologies do not use ozone-depleting substances and rely on refrigerants with low to lower global warming potential. They are also more energy efficient.
  • Check the criteria and use them in your own purchasing decision (a fridge, cooler or even AC)

The exhibition is ongoing and continuously updated with submissions accepted on a rolling basis.

The partners of the exhibition will continue promoting the exhibition at all relevant events and throughout 2022 and beyond.

The virtual exhibition focuses on cold chain technologies and game-changing systemic approaches, relevant initiatives, and not-in-kind solutions to cold chains. Click here for more information about the type of technologies and approaches we look for.

In the second part of the nomination page, there is a section for submitting the cold chain related game-changing and systemic approaches and relevant initiatives that target any of the following aspects:

  • Sector governance and/or institutional setups
  • Sector modelling and analysis
  • Transformation to sustainable solutions.

Please submit your nomination using this form.

Once received, the submitted information will be reviewed by the organizers. If your technology is accepted, you will receive a template to prepare a summary for the display of your technology or approach on the exhibition website, including links for further information and contact details.

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