Release of Guidance on Perishable Loss Reduction

The safe and timely delivery of perishable goods is a priority in air cargo transportation and is necessary to ensure product safety and quality. The Guidance on Perishable Loss Reduction (pdf) was developed to offer strategies and best practices essential to mitigating loss.

There are 3 common causes of loss:

  1. Damage due to improper handling or inadequate packaging.
    Solution: appropriate packaging methods, techniques, and materials, adherence to handling procedures (up-to-date training), real-time tracking, and monitoring to identify at which stage damage occurs to prevent future incidents.
  2. Delays caused by logistical issues, regulatory hurdles, unpredictable weather conditions
    Solution:  implementing product-particular loading/offloading needs and procedures, identifying where bottlenecks occur i.e. using tracking data so risk management procedures could be put in place, and optimizing routing and scheduling.
  3.  Transit operations such as regulatory hurdles and miscommunication which pose risks to cargo integrity.
    Solution: leveraging systems and platforms to optimize the transit process with predictive analytics, transit times, etc., and collaboration between supply chain stakeholders.


Your organization can tackle these obstacles by applying four immediately actionable steps

  • Ensuring organizational compliance with regulatory requirements at origin, in transit, and at destination.
  • Ensuring that the required equipment and infrastructure are available to effectively conduct perishable handling and transportation operations
  • Engage with your community and the wider supply chain to share best practices and improve the performance and productivity of your organization
  • Contributing to standard-setting activity to support the industry in aligning and moving forward with efficient practices

Don't miss out on the Guidance on Perishable Loss Reduction (pdf)