Danfoss partnership scales cold chain monitoring

DENMARK/USA: Danfoss has announced a partnership with US retail technology company Lizard Monitoring to help North American retailers prevent food loss.

The Lizard’s sensor networks are said to complement Danfoss’ Alsense monitoring suite to ensure continuous temperature monitoring, providing store managers and food safety executives with detailed data on refrigeration performance and environmental compliance.

The partnership between Danfoss and Lizard Monitoring was launched at this week’s AHR Expo in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Danfoss’ Alsense, an Internet of Things (IoT) platform built within Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, is used to track refrigeration performance, allowing retail managers to respond to alarms, ensure 24/7 monitoring of food conditions, and reduce energy consumption.

Lizard supplies robust wireless sensor networks to collect data from retail environments and send it to the cloud where it is mined for trends that lead to food waste before they happen. As a result, customers receive early warnings and fewer alarms combined with a detailed record of each event and what was done by in-store teams in response.

“Our customers are looking for sustainable solutions and more automation to reduce product loss and labour and energy costs,” commented Danfoss North America sales director of food retail Peter Dee. “The Lizard solution is highly complementary to the Danfoss Alsense platform and together gives a 360-degree view of your store’s refrigeration performance.”

Danfoss also launched a new cloud-based mobile app for the Danfoss Alsense Foodservice Platform at the AHR Expo, which allows commercial refrigeration customers to monitor their assets in the field. The app monitors their refrigeration assets, such as bottle coolers, display coolers, and vending machines, from anywhere in the field.

The app works in conjunction with hardware that acts as an IoT enabler to provide end users with real-time data 24/7/365, including instant alerts, location and automatic data logging. This helps asset owners ensure food quality, equipment performance and reduce costs due to food waste.

“This combination of IoT enablers and a cloud-based app is a game-changer for owners of commercial refrigeration assets,” said Michael Kellerman, director of EC&S business development at Danfoss North America. “Assets in the field can be monitored from anywhere, at any time, allowing owners to ensure the quality and safety of food and be confident in their HACCP compliance.”