UK Cold Chain Logistics Market to Show Rapid Surge in Consumption

The UK cold chain logistics market size was valued at $4.55 billion in 2018 and is projected to reach $24.37 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 23.6% from 2019 to 2026. The meat, fish, and sea food segment accounted for the highest share in 2018 and is anticipated to exhibit remarkable growth rate during the forecast period.
Adoption of cold chain logistics plays a crucial role in avoiding the wastage of the temperature sensitive goods and commodities, providing lucrative prices to the farmers. In the pharmaceutical industry, cold chain logistics solutions increase the effectiveness of drugs throughout the supply chain to end user. The UK cold chain logistics market trends are anticipated to experience significant growth during the forecast period.
The freezing solutions required to maintain the quality and shelf life of products, such as fresh agricultural produce, seafood, frozen food, photographic films, chemicals, and pharmaceutical drugs is referred to as cold chain logistics. Adoption of cold chain is very essential to extend the period of marketing, avoid over capacity, reduce transport bottlenecks during peak period, and maintain quality of products. In addition, the utilization of temperature-controlled warehouses for storage and cold insulated transport vehicles for product distribution is involved in the UK cold chain logistics market. Moreover, this solution is widely used to transport and store fruits, vegetables, meat, beef, medicines, and drugs. The market uses transportation modes such refrigerated trucks, refrigerated railcars, refrigerated cargo, and air cargo.
Factors such as increase in number of refrigerated warehouses and development of the pharmaceutical sector are expected to drive the growth of the UK cold chain logistics market. However, factors such as lack of standardization pertaining to operating procedures, security, temperature, pest control, and others and high operational cost restrains the market growth. On the contrary, availability of RFID technologies for cold chain applications and adoption of automated software for cold chain logistics are projected to offer lucrative growth opportunity for the market players.
The UK cold chain logistics market is segmented on the basis of end user. Depending on end user, it is categorized into fruits & vegetables; bakery & confectionary; dairy & frozen desserts; meat, fish, and sea food; drugs & pharmaceuticals; and others.
Dozens of warehouses comprising cold chain systems are designed to ensure ideal storage and transportation conditions for temperature-sensitive products. Multiple export industries are dependent on vital links that cold chain solution system provides. Moreover, businesses invest millions of dollars in their cold chain operations to create effective, efficient, and reliable process because an end-to-end cold chain security is the weak link in the system.
Single breakdown in the cold chain logistics can lead to catastrophic losses of products and capital. In addition, the UK has been named as the third largest online grocery market in the world after South Korea and Japan. Furthermore, around 6.1% of the grocery sales in the UK is made online, which in turn propels the growth of the cold chain logistics market. Thus, increase in number of refrigerated warehouses to maintain the integrity of grocery sold online is expected to boost the growth of the market.