When shoppers arrived at supermarkets during last week’s heatwave to find empty meal deal fridges, cordoned-off chilled aisles and out-of-service refrigeration units, many assumed they were seeing another supply chain disruption.
In reality, the products weren’t always missing. As temperatures climbed above 36°C, it was in fact refrigeration failures that left supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Morrisons with chilled aisles empty or temporarily closed.
The disruption comes as retailers continue to experience strong demand for seasonal food and drink during periods of hot weather. Speaking alongside its latest trading update this week, Sainsbury’s said it had experienced record demand for products including ice cream, pizzas and salads, while continuing to invest in upgrading refrigeration equipment across its estate.
According to Trevor Jordaan, Senior Director, Industry Strategy Advisor at Blue Yonder, these incidents should be viewed as more than isolated equipment failures. Instead, they highlight a growing operational challenge for grocery retailers as climate change places increasing strain on infrastructure that was designed for a very different environment.
Trevor Jordaan, Senior Director, Industry Strategy Advisor, Blue Yonder, commented:
“Climate risk no longer sits only outside the business; it exists within the retail network itself. Extreme heat doesn’t place pressure on a single refrigeration unit. It places simultaneous pressure across the entire cold chain.
“Refrigerated transport works harder in higher ambient temperatures. Cold storage warehouses carry greater cooling loads. Distribution centres have less thermal headroom. Store refrigeration runs almost continuously. Higher customer demand means chilled cabinets are opened more frequently. Store colleagues spend more time monitoring temperatures, removing products from sale, and managing customer expectations.
“Every part of the network continues operating but with less resilience and less margin for error. The supermarket shelf is simply where customers first notice. That invisible system is far more important than many people realise.
“More than half of the UK’s food passes through the cold chain before reaching consumers. Around 460 major cold storage facilities support that network, and more than half are estimated to be over 20 years old. Much of this infrastructure was designed for operating conditions that look very different from today’s climate.
“We’re no longer planning for a future climate. We’re operating in it. That should prompt a bigger question. How much of our retail infrastructure was designed for a world that no longer exists?
“Retailers already possess much of the information they need. They know the weather forecast, where inventory sits, what’s selling, where transport is. Increasingly they also know how refrigeration assets are performing. The challenge isn’t collecting more data but connecting those signals early enough to recognise that the cold chain is becoming stressed before customers notice the consequences.
“This is where the next chapter of grocery resilience will be written. Artificial intelligence won’t lower the outside temperature or repair ageing refrigeration assets. What it can do is help organisations detect weak signals earlier, predict equipment stress, anticipate demand shifts, and orchestrate faster decisions across stores, transport, warehouses and suppliers while options still exist.
“Resilience increasingly depends not just on stronger infrastructure, but on better connected decision-making. It will require organisations to connect people, processes, data and technology quickly enough to respond before disruption becomes visible to customers. The question is whether our cold chain and the decisions that support it will be ready when it does.”
