Temperature-sensitive shipping doesn't leave room for error. When your cold chain breaks, you risk both product safety and significant financial loss.

Many shippers find themselves caught between protecting products, meeting sustainability targets, and managing rising transport costs. Making small improvements across your operation can have a big impact. When was the last time you evaluated your packing strategy? Rethinking your packing approach can be a simple and effective way to reduce these pressures and optimize your cold chain.

The Unique Challenges of Cold Chain Logistics

Cold chain logistics introduces challenges that standard fulfillment operations don't face. Products must maintain specific temperature ranges throughout the entirety of the cold chain, making specialized coolants and containers necessary. If spoilage due to improper packing occurs, the product could become unsafe for customers, and you eat the cost. Add rising shipping costs and fees and margins are squeezed even further.

Proper packing becomes critical in these operations. Beyond selecting appropriate insulation materials, packers must carefully position items with the correct coolants. This time-consuming process becomes increasingly complex as product assortments expand and order volumes increase.

As your business scales, how you pack can make or break your cold chain. An algorithm sophisticated enough to handle your unique requirements can determine profitability in today's competitive market. Yet many cold chain shippers continue relying on outdated, rule-based packing approaches that can't adapt to evolving business needs and cost pressures.

When Basic Cartonization Falls Short: Daily Harvest’s Story

Daily Harvest, a direct-to-consumer company delivering sustainably grown frozen food products, recently faced a significant challenge in their ecommerce fulfillment process. Their unique product shapes included cups and bowls that required specific packing configurations like stacking and nesting. Each product had to be strategically packed with dry ice and properly placed within the container.

Initially, Daily Harvest used generalized packing rules translated into hard-coded heuristics. However, when their product assortment changed, these rigid rules couldn't adapt, resulting in suboptimal box recommendations and significant transportation cost overages.

Wesley Williams, Vice President of Supply Chain at Daily Harvest, explains: "In our build versus buy analysis it became quickly evident at how complex it was to solve for what on the surface initially felt like it may be relatively straight forward math."

This is a common realization among cold chain shippers. What seems like a straightforward packing problem quickly reveals itself as a multidimensional optimization challenge requiring sophisticated modern technology. Check out the full Daily Harvest story.

The Cold Chain Cartonization Solution

For cold chain shippers facing similar challenges, advanced 3D cartonization offers a path forward. Unlike basic liquid fill cartonization built into most warehouse management systems, modern cartonization solutions use sophisticated algorithms that consider true 3D item dimensions, nesting capabilities, coolant requirements, insulation thickness, and carrier rate structures that influence optimal packing decisions.

By implementing Paccurate's parcel packing intelligence platform, Daily Harvest was able to process their historical order data with specialized packing rules that accounted for cartons, dry ice, and various SKU scenarios. In a sample of 23,857 orders, Paccurate's API improved cartonization for 3,645 cartons, marking an 18% improvement.

With Paccurate, shippers gain confidence that product integrity is maintained throughout the shipping process, ensuring customers receive their orders in perfect condition.

Is Your Cold Chain Built for What’s Next?

For cold chain shippers, Paccurate's cartonization helps reduce material waste through right-sizing shipping boxes, leading to greater efficiency and increased sustainability. All packing instructions generated by the platform come with detailed 3D images showing exactly how items should be packed, saving packers time and reducing errors.

Advanced cartonization creates a foundation for future-proofing operations. When order volumes increase due to seasonal demand or changing economic conditions, Paccurate adapts quickly to product assortment changes and helps identify new savings opportunities.

Daily Harvest's journey with advanced cartonization continued well beyond implementation. Williams stated, "As we look to the future, Paccurate will continue to be a tool and partnership that we leverage in our continuous improvement on the packaging and bin optimization fronts, including trailer utilization to pallet TiHi."

This highlights another advantage of sophisticated cartonization platforms: they enable ongoing analysis and refinement. For Daily Harvest, the next step involves using PacSimulate to analyze their box sizes and determine whether minor adjustments could yield additional savings in transportation and materials costs.

From Insight to Action: Steps for Optimization

If you're shipping temperature-sensitive products and facing similar challenges, evaluate your current packing process to see if you're relying on basic rules that don't account for your unique needs. Analyze your cost structure to determine expenses on excess packaging, coolants, dimensional weight charges, and temperature-related returns. Consider your complexity factors, such as product shapes, nesting capabilities, and temperature requirements, and explore advanced cartonization options that can handle your specific constraints. Think long-term about partners who can support not just your current needs but help you adapt as your business evolves.

Cold chain shippers can't afford to absorb the costs of inefficient packing. Daily Harvest and others have recognized that a modern packing strategy is key to optimizing cold-chain shipments. Advanced cartonization allows shippers to reduce costs, enhance sustainability, and improve product integrity. For companies shipping perishable or temperature-sensitive items like fresh foods, adopting the latest cartonization technology is a strategic advantage.