Pathways to Net Zero Cold-Chains Webinar

An industry webinar to discuss academic, industry and policy-maker collaborations to steer the future of cold-chains both in the UK and globally.

2020 was the year that the importance of the cold-chain in society - ensuring continuous supply of food and vaccines - became more visible.

The Cold-chain industry is a fast-growing and rapidly expanding sector, recognised as central to both development and climate goals. Significant opportunities exist for the cold-chain industry to ensure resilience and seamless operation from ‘manufacturer to arm’ and ‘farm to fork’, while enabling the sector to become net-zero carbon by 2050.  

A collaboration of UK Universities with world-class expertise in clean cooling and cold-chain [University of Birmingham, London South Bank University (LSBU), Cranfield University (CU) and Heriot-Watt University (Centre for Sustainable Road-freight)] are leading a new set of £multi-million research programmes to create the fit-for-market step-change pathways to net zero cold-chain and cooling for all. 

The webinar will explore:

The new first of a kind Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES), established in collaboration with the Governments of Rwanda and the UK and the United Nations Environment Programme’s United for Efficiency initiative. Headquartered in Rwanda with Living Labs to be rolled out into other countries across Africa, it will provide a pan-continent hub to showcase fit-for-market technology solutions and business models as well as build local capacity and a trained workforce.

 A whole systems “farm to customer fridge” approach to redefine the UK’s cold-chain architecture and map the opportunities available to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 as well as identify the roles for cooling and its technologies in providing flexibility and resilience in the UK’s energy systems.  

Given the cold-chain is intrinsically about global interconnectivity - the UK is reliant on imports; 84% of fruits and 47% of vegetables were imported in 2019 (DEFRA), the projects will present significant opportunities for synergy and shared thinking, approaches, learning and knowledge as well as in-market demonstration. 

We are very keen to engage stakeholders and industry partners in the cold-chains to help develop the comprehensive evidence driven set of roadmaps to present to policy-makers as well as demonstrate the technologies that will helps steer the future of cold-chains.

We would like to invite you to this industry webinar to learn about these major new programmes and start the discussions.

Plrease register below