Enhancing Profitability in Multi-Fruit Supply Chains Using Multi-Temperature Refrigerated Vehicles

Abstract

The agricultural cold chain is multifaceted compared to other supply chains due to the perishability, demand and price variations, food safety and food quality, and its reliance on climate situation. Though utilization of cold chain infrastructure decreases food loss and enhances food security, it will also lead to an increase in total supply chain cost, further reducing the stakeholder’s profit. This makes the stakeholders in the FSC hesitate in implementing cold chain storage and logistics. To overcome this challenge, this paper aims to maximize the profit of the intermediate stakeholder by considering multi-temperature refrigerated vehicles (MTRV) along the fruit supply chain (FSC). A mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) mathematical model is proposed to maximize the profit in the fruit supply chain network (FSCN) that involves a state distribution center (SDC), district distribution center (DDC), and retailers. The developed mathematical model is solved using the heuristic approach. Many scenarios were built and tested to evaluate the formulated model's efficiency. The results show that the profit of the intermediate stakeholder in the FSC is appreciable while considering MTRV instead of dedicated reefer trucks.