Trace every frozen pack from raw lot to pallet position and keep each cold chain reading.

Freezing fixes a product in time. Whatever was in the vegetables, the fish or the dough when it entered the tunnel is what the customer eventually cooks. That makes the record made at the plant far more valuable than it is in a plant that ships fresh.

Yet the record is scattered. Receiving notes are on paper at the dock. Freezer temperatures sit in a data logger that someone downloads on Fridays, and pallet positions live in the memory of the cold store lead. A buyer asks which raw lot went into a pack now sitting in a retailer’s warehouse, and the plant needs most of a day to answer.

Raw material arrives chilled or frozen, is checked for temperature at the dock, and goes to a chiller or straight to the line. Vegetables are washed, cut and blanched. Fish and meat are portioned and glazed. Ready meals are cooked, chilled and portioned into trays. Product then enters a blast freezer or a tunnel freezer that freezes each piece separately, where belt speed and air temperature decide how fast the core reaches the target.

Frozen product is weighed, bagged or cartoned, coded with a lot and a best-before date, and stacked on pallets for the cold store. Orders are picked oldest first, loaded into a reefer, and sent with a temperature record that the customer can read on arrival. Between shifts, the quality lead reviews freezer logs and the glaze weights taken on the checkweigher. A gap in either one holds the pallet.