Pasteurizing Against Cold Chain Cost Comparator

The decision behind the equipment decision. Put the tunnel investment and its energy in one column, and cold storage, refrigerated transport and short-shelf-life write-off in the other. Every rate below is your own, in whatever currency you work in, so the answer belongs to your plant rather than to a brochure.

Volume and horizon

Pasteurizing route

Cold chain route

Comparison

The comparison is deliberately narrow: it weighs the running cost of holding product cold against the cost of treating it once, and it ignores what neither route can buy you. It does not price the sales reach an ambient product opens up, the listing a chilled product loses, or the flavour change any heat step brings. Break-even is expressed in packs rather than months, because a line that runs two shifts reaches it in half the calendar time of a line that runs one.