Analysis of the demand status and forecast of food cold chain in Beijing

Purpose: Food cold chain is very important for ensuring food safety and decreasing the loss in the supply process. It is also benefit for the citizen, because cold chain could promise the food safety and the demand of the special cold food. Beijing, as the capital, the level of food chain is high, compared to other cities, and analysis of the demand status and forecast of food cold chain in Beijing is necessary, it could direct the scientific and health development of cold chain all over our country. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, in accordance with the investigation, we analysis the demand status of food cold chain from two aspects, then according to the status, we forecast the demand of refrigerated cars and warehouse for food cold chain in Beijing with the multivariate statistics. Findings: From the analysis of the paper, we can see that the need of cold chain logistics grows rapidly, but most consumers are lack of the awareness of the importance of the cold chain and many companies cannot bear the huge investment, it make the gap of the resources of cold chain logistics large and cannot meet the normal need of cold chain logistics in Beijing. Originality/value: The result of this paper could support the relative enterprise to run business in terms of the refrigerated car and warehouse.


Introduction
Being closely relative to the health of Human Beings, food safety has gained more and more attention from all countries. Not only can the frozen food guarantee the nutrition of food, but also can keep the food fresh. Beijing, as the capital of China, has a big food consumption, then research on the cold chain is necessary, Beijing should be concerned the hygiene and safety of the mass consumption food. Nowadays, with people's life standardization growing, consumers call for high level service from manufactures (Fang, Gao & Fan, 2005). So enterprises must pay more attention on cold chain to protect the safety of food supply, then make cold chain logistics get great development as a special logistics.
What's more, the frozen food has its own characteristics, such as short shelf life, special demand for temperature and so on, which influence the distribution. If there is something wrong with the food safety, there will be a lot of problems (Su & Li, 2007). So the frozen food distribution has been very important.
According to above, there will be large demand for frozen food, such as refrigerated cars, refrigerated warehouse and so on. In this paper, we will forecast the demand of refrigerated cars and refrigerated warehouse in Beijing based on the status of food cold chain of Beijing.
The outcome of the forecast will be a reference for the enterprise of food cold chain and government.

The status of facilities and equipment of cold chain logistics
There are many facilities and equipment in cold chain logistics, but one of the most important and that could reflect the capacity of cold chain logistics is refrigerated cars and refrigerated warehouse.

The status of refrigerated cars
Existing 2405 refrigerated cars in Beijing, as shown in Table 3. Mainly 2 ton refrigerated cars (containing less than 2 tons) .It's related to the city distribution on cold chain logistics in Beijing. Its demand has characteristics of a small batch, multi-volume.   Beijing refrigerated warehouse resources has been rapid growth. On the other hand, the Beijing refrigerated warehouse resources also need to increase, it's still has a gap to developed countries.

Analysis of the demand forecast of food cold chain in Beijing
The facilities and equipment of cold chain logistics is developing with their demand at the same way, only in this way, the resources of cold chain logistics will be used fully and properly, and meet the requirement for the cold chain of the relevant food, which could ensure food safety.

Analysis of the demand forecast of refrigerated cars
The theoretical value of max carrying capacity of the existing refrigerated cars We use the data in Table 3 Table 5. The theoretical value of max carrying capacity of the existing refrigerated cars As shown in Table 5, the theoretical value of max carrying capacity is 5.24 million tons when distributing twice per day, namely the annual carrying capacity is about 0.19 million tons. It has a very big disparity from the data in Table 1 and Table 2, which cannot meet the needs of the society.
If all the mutton meat, poultry, aquatic products (hypothesis 50%), part of eggs (hypothesis 50%), fruits (hypothesis 25%) and fresh vegetables (hypothesis 25%) are required cold chain transportation. According to the current urban road traffic management measures of Beijing city, the motor vehicles are forbidden during 6 and 23 o'clock within the forth-loop roads (including the forth-road). Additionally, in 2010, the urban population of Beijing is 86% (from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of statistics data: the urban population is 16.864 million, rural population is 2.755 million). Since most urban population live in the center of Beijing (within the forth-loop roads) and the average consumption amount of food is higher, this paper assumes that the tonnage transported by refrigerated trucks to the city center accounts for 70% of the total tonnage. This paper take the 1-ton deadweight and 2-ton deadweight for example, calculate the required number of refrigerated cars per day when distributing once in the city.

The demand of refrigerated cars calculated via per capita consumption
Take the data of 2010 as an example. Table 6 shows the per capita consumption of related cold chain food in 2010. The population of Beijing in 2010 is 19.619 million. We can get the total consumption of Beijing and the consumption within the forth-loop roads, thus the theoretical value of refrigerated cars needed can be calculated, as shown in Table 6.
Because the cold chain food needs to be transported by refrigerate cars at least once before reaching consumers (e.g. from the origin directly to the supermarket and then bought by consumers), while the more common situation is repeatedly refrigerated transportation from production enterprises to the wholesale business, wholesale business to retail enterprises. As a result, Table 6 calculates the minimum theoretical value.

Analysis of demand forecast of refrigerated warehouse
The theoretical value of max warehouse of the existing refrigerated warehouse In the investigation, we found that the turnover rate of the existing refrigerated warehouse is more than 30 days. The stored goods of annual turnover are only about 1,095 million tons, and it's under the max warehouse of 900,000 tons of the existing refrigerated warehouse. So if the turnover period is 30 days, which is far from being able to meet the demand of refrigerated warehouse in Beijing.
We can learn about the uniform calculating method of refrigerated warehouse capacity which is reached by national refrigerated warehouse business innovation and energy saving seminars: The national refrigerated warehouse capacity will be calculated with nominal volume in units of cubic meters in three years. In order to facilitate the statistics, the calculated density of freezing food in the refrigerated warehouse is set to 0.3 ton/cubic meter, and the calculated density of cooling food in the refrigerated warehouse is set to 0.15 tons/cubic meter. At the same time, the food has gone through at least two links in the circulation (such as directly from the manufacturer to the retail in the simplest commodity circulation process), and food in every process should be stored for a long or short time, so that tonnage of the refrigerated warehouse may be considered at least twice as big as the tonnage of the food which needs to be stored. The author's research showed that some resources of the refrigerated warehouse were occupied by some other things such as the channels, the actual utilization of the refrigerated warehouse is 80% of its theoretical value, so the theoretical value of the refrigerated warehouse needs should be assumed for more than 1.25 times than the tonnage of actual needs. Here, the food which to be stored in the refrigerated warehouse is calculated under the same assumptions as the refrigerated cars, the turnover rate of the inventory is 7 days ,15 days, 30 days and 40 days, and we assume the freezing refrigerated warehouse and the cooling refrigerated warehouse is half of all the food respectively. The need of refrigerated warehouse is calculated from two aspects which are per capita consumption and wholesale market volume.

The demand of refrigerated warehouse calculated via per capita consumption
The demand of refrigerated warehouse resources in Beijing is calculated under the above assumption with the example of per capita consumption in 2010.
In the same way, the results calculated via per capita consumption in table 8 is the least demand of refrigerated warehouse of the existing food which needs to be stored.  pork  62552  134041  268082  357442  beef  19753  42329  84657  112876  mutton  15050  32250  64501  86001  poultry  24692  52911  105822  141096  eggs  115110  246665  493331  657774  vegetables  46679  100027  200053  266738  fruits  53146  113884  227769  303691  aquatic products  11523  24692  49383  65845  total  348506 746799 1493597 1991463  We can see the demand of refrigerated warehouse in different turnover rate in table 9.
Through the author's research, we can see that the turnover rate of the existing refrigerated warehouse is mostly over 30 days, there is more than 1.25 million tons of refrigerated warehouse needed if the turnover rate is 30 days from the two tables above, but the capacity of the existing refrigerated warehouse is 0.70~0.90 million tons; on the other hand, the annual turnover of stored goods is only about 10.95(<21.57) million tons under the max warehouse of 0.90 million tons of the existing refrigerated warehouse if the turnover period is 30 days. We can see that the existing refrigerated warehouse resources can hardly meet the daily need in Beijing from the comparison above; it is even harder to promise enough refrigerated warehouse in some special situations such as on holidays. Apart from this, we can learn in the paper that the ratio of the need of refrigerated warehouse between all kinds of food is about 55 (pork); 13 (beef); 10 (mutton); 9 (poultry); 25 (eggs); 440 (vegetables); 266 (fruits); 52 (aquatic products), it can be concluded that fresh vegetables and fruits occupied most of the resources, but the refrigerated warehouse which used to store fresh vegetables and fruits does not develop well, many fresh vegetables and fruits are not stored in the refrigerated warehouse, it make fresh vegetables and fruits spoiled. So this is the main point of the future development of refrigerated warehouse.

Conclusions
The purpose of food cold chain logistics is to ensure food quality, the core requirements of food cold chain logistics is to keep low temperatures, so it is more complex and its demand is higher than the common logistics system in the average temperature, the construction of food cold chain logistics needs more investment compared with the common logistics system in the average temperature, and it is a huge systems engineering. From the analysis of the paper, we can see that the need of cold chain logistics grows rapidly, but most consumers are lack of the awareness of the importance of the cold chain and many companies cannot bear the huge investment, it make the gap of the resources of cold chain logistics large and cannot meet the normal need of cold chain logistics in Beijing. Due to the lack of resources of cold chain logistics, on the one hand, it limits the development of cold chain logistics in Beijing, on the other hand, it results in the food which should be transferred by refrigerated cars transported by room temperature vehicles and stored in room temperature, it constitutes food loss and affect the quality of people's lives.
Cold chain logistics in Beijing walk in the forefront in China, but there is still much space for improvement. Only the development of cold chain logistics meets the actual needs, it can ensure the whole community develop cooperatively and improve people's lives and the economic benefits.