An Analytic Model for Estimating the Economic and Environmental Impact of Food Cold Supply Chain

Cold chain management has gained increasing interest among practitioners, researchers and academics; similarly, sustainability is also proving to be an increasingly critical topic in all supply chains and in cold chains in particular. In line with this, this study proposes a model to estimate the economic and environmental impacts in a food cold supply chain (FCSC). The model intended to estimate the total cost and CO2 emissions of a company operating in the cold supply chain, was carried out in Microsoft Excel™. Specifically, the model reproduces the main FCSC processes, i.e., Product collection, Backroom storage, Product delivery and Reverse logistics. For each process, we have exposed the implemented equations. Results show that the product delivery process is the most critical in both economic and environmental terms. Conversely, product collection and reverse logistics process contribute to the total cost and emission to a limited extent. The results obtained provide useful guidelines for supply chain managers to undertake operation decisions aimed at decreasing the economic and/or environmental impact of a FCSC.