Photo: Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue, 2016.
In several developing economies, the availability of cold storage facilities is limited, and building such storage can be beyond the reach of small and medium-sized traders. Alternative solutions, such as using reefers for the temporary storage of frozen food, can be found. The importer is willing to pay additional demurrage (about $50 per day) to be able to use reefers as refrigerated warehouses and load refrigerated delivery trucks directly from them. Once the contents of a reefer have been fully unloaded for multiple smaller deliveries (can take about a week), it is brought back to the container yard. Second-hand reefers can also be purchased and used as permanent refrigerated storage.