William C. Duggan

Sessions With William C. Duggan

Monday, 3 March

• 04:00pm - 04:45pm (PST) / 04/mar/2025 12:00 am - 04/mar/2025 12:45 am

  Building for the Future: Analyzing Where the Cold Chain Investment is Flowing

  The global cold chain equipment market is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 20% over the next 10 years, to $110.4 billion, driven by various devices used to keep perishables at a stable, controlled temperature, according to research firm SNS Insider. Driving the growth are numerous factors: rapidly increasing global demand for perishable goods, including fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy products, meat, seafood, and frozen foods; globalization and trade trends that demand longer shipping times; increasing demand for online grocery services; the emergence of tech-enabled devices for real-time monitoring, visibility, and data gathering; and a growing emphasis on food safety. As demands grow, so does the need for new investment — in cold-storage and transportation equipment such as freezers, containers, ships, and trucks, as well as temperature-control technology — to limit spoilage that was so prevalent in the COVID era. On the equipment side, lower demand in 2023 put little stress on reefer availability, but that is changing rapidly as growth returns. Likewise, lower demand put little stress on port fluidity in 2023, but with new routing patterns resulting from disruption to services in the Suez Canal — and new rounds of disruption certainly to follow — bunching could begin to occur at ports and terminals in the trans-Pacific trades, meaning temperature controls must be in place for longer periods of time than ever. This session will assess the demand for investment in cold chain equipment and technology, while analyzing the innovation in the market to address increasingly complex supply chain challenges.

  • Speakers:
  • Christian Allred
  • Robert F. Sappio
  • Sara Goodman-Stickler
  • Chris Swartz
  • William C. Duggan

Tuesday, 4 March

• 02:20pm - 03:00pm (PST) / 04/mar/2025 10:20 pm - 04/mar/2025 11:00 pm

  Managing Risk: Preparing for the Next Black Swan Event

  When the International Longshoremen’s Association on Oct. 1 launched a strike at East and Gulf coast ports, it was just the latest event to significantly disrupt supply chains in general, and refrigerated shippers in particular. And though the ILA and management settled the contract before further damage could be done in mid-January, the fact remains: Whether it’s labor strife, the 2020-2021 COVID pandemic, shipping diversions away from the Red Sea and Suez Canal, drought restrictions in the Panama Canal, or other weather-related incidents, events that once were seen as rare — hence the term “black swan” — now aren’t only the norm, but also must be considered the expectation. Temperature-sensitive products that have a short shelf life — bananas and other fruits and vegetables, meat and seafood, even flowers — are especially prone to disruption and unexpected delays that can make the difference between product availability and wasteful spoilage. But it’s one thing to plan for predictive disruption — the ILA strike, for example — and another to fall victim to the unexpected. So how, then, can cold chain shippers prepare for the unpredictable? What implications do such events have on supply chain decisions, from sourcing and scheduling to capacity and visibility procurement? What best practices can perishables shippers employ that promote business continuity during supply chain turmoil? This TPM Cold Chain session will feature a mix of shippers and service providers discussing how they’ve navigated around recent supply chain turmoil and, more importantly, how they now view buainess-continuity planning in this age of disruption.

  • Speakers:
  • Claus Aagaard
  • Claes Lindgren
  • William C. Duggan