Vertical Specialist - Handling Your Goods With Care

The asparagus isn’t cold enough although the in-container temperature is correctly set, and Jim Bailey, APL’s Special Commodities Manager in Los Angeles, insists on knowing the reason.

Temperature recordings from inside the container show the refrigeration unit is blowing out cold air around 35ºF. But after circulating around the asparagus, the air is slightly warmer.

Jim's many years of experience tell him that the delicate vegetable isn't sufficiently chilled upon loading and even though it is traveling in an advanced, controlled-atmosphere container, that’s what could make the difference to whether this valuable crop survives the ocean transit and reaches Asia at peak freshness.
To resolve the problem, Jim heads south to visit the packing plant near the California-Mexico border and investigates. He discovers that the machine used for cooling the asparagus is being overloaded and is not cooling the product to the requisite 35ºF. As a result of Jim’s advice, the customer buys a bigger machine; the asparagus is properly chilled and APL successfully delivers it to market in prime condition.

APL's global refrigerated container fleet serves producers on multiple continents with equipment that offers the latest technology for temperature monitoring, humidity regulation, modified atmosphere shipping, controlled atmosphere shipping and bulb-setting. To help you meet your local quarantine regulations, you can expect APL to deliver value-added handling processes such as cold treatment.
But behind the state-of-the-art equipment is a level of care and attention to detail, backed by APL expertise. For example, in North America, when these refrigerated containers are loaded with produce, meat and perishables, they are inspected at multiple locations among the approximately 100 points along our rail network.

And APL works to stay ahead of the curve as well. Our global refrigerated cargo management team, based in Singapore, seeks out trends and keeps abreast of latest happenings in order to position the refrigerated container fleet to be ready for produce as it matures or comes into season, from longan fruit in China to grapes in Chile, to fish in Alaska.

Bud Meacham of Alaska Ocean Seafood, which has shipped US$300 million worth of product over the past 15 years, thinks APL plays an important role in his business, "Without APL, I doubt we could have become as successful as we have."

"I can't speak highly enough of them," says a large shipper of fresh produce. "They know more than I do. I look to them for knowledge and advice."

Adds Tony Danseglio of the Bortesi Co., an importer of dairy products, "They're a very important part of our supply chain. They give us an excellent flow from the manufacturer to the receiver."
Be it refrigerated or other special needs cargo, from fashion apparel to fragile e-goods, APL's level of expertise speaks of our intimate understanding of our clients' business.