The Infrastructure You Never Think About

Every time you buy milk from a supermarket, collect medication from a pharmacy, or enjoy fresh fruit in winter, you’re benefiting from 150 years of accumulated innovation.

The cold chain—that invisible network of refrigerated trucks, temperature-controlled warehouses, reefer ships, and cargo aircraft—didn’t appear overnight. It was built problem by problem, decade by decade, continent by continent, by inventors, engineers, and entrepreneurs who refused to accept that perishable goods couldn’t travel.

Their solutions created the infrastructure that feeds cities, enables agricultural exports worth billions of rands, and delivers life-saving medications to clinics across the country.

Understanding this history isn’t just interesting—it’s practical. The physics problems solved in 1875 are the same physics problems South African operators face today. The principles that made refrigerated shipping work in 1882 still determine whether fruit arrives in European markets in saleable condition. The engineering that enabled refrigerated trucking in 1940 underlies every reefer unit on Gauteng’s highways.

Together, the innovations discussed in the articles created the capability to move perishable goods anywhere in the world while maintaining their quality. That capability feeds cities, enables agricultural exports, supports healthcare, and makes modern food systems possible.

South Africa’s cold chain infrastructure—built over more than a century—participates in this global system. Understanding its history illuminates both its current capabilities and its future development needs.

The cold chain continues evolving. New technologies emerge. Markets change. Challenges like load shedding demand adaptation. But the fundamental principles—maintain temperature, move efficiently, store properly—endure.

The butcher, the ship captain, the self-taught inventor, the flower farmer, the cold store operator: all participants in a system that most people never see but everyone depends upon.

That’s the cold chain. That’s its history. That’s why it matters.

The Cold Chain Origins Series

Part 1: Rail — The Butcher Who Beat the Railroads

How One Man’s Math Created the Cold Chain Revolution

In 1875, Gustavus Swift stood in a Chicago slaughterhouse doing arithmetic that would transform global food distribution. Every steer shipped live to New York weighed 1,200 pounds, but only 600 pounds was sellable beef. Swift was paying to transport 600 pounds of waste.

His solution—slaughter in Chicago, ship only the meat—seemed impossible. Fresh meat spoiled. The railroads refused to cooperate. Eastern consumers distrusted “Chicago dressed beef.”

Swift solved them all. With engineer Andrew Chase, he developed refrigerated rail cars that maintained temperature across multi-day journeys. When American railroads boycotted his innovation, he contracted with Canadian lines. When consumers were sceptical, he undercut local butchers on price.

By his death in 1903, Swift & Company employed 21,000 people and processed millions of animals annually. The refrigerated rail car had arrived—and the principles Chase established (pre-cooling, proper insulation, adequate capacity, top-mounted cooling) remain foundational to cold chain engineering today.

The South African Connection: The Hex River Valley railway, completed in the 1870s, enabled the same possibility for Western Cape fruit that Swift exploited for Chicago beef. The physics of keeping cargo cold during multi-day transport applied equally to both.

Read the full article: The Butcher Who Beat the Railroads →

Part 2: Sea — The Ships That Made Continents Neighbours

How Refrigerated Shipping Connected South Africa to the World

Rail solved overland transport. Ocean crossings presented a far greater challenge—voyages measured in weeks, not days, across tropical waters that would destroy any cargo not properly protected.

The breakthrough came in 1882 when the sailing ship Dunedin carried frozen New Zealand meat to London. The cargo arrived frozen solid after 98 days at sea. More importantly, it was profitable.

South Africa entered maritime refrigerated shipping through fruit exports. The first attempt in 1889 failed completely—the fruit arrived spoiled and was destroyed. Three years of experimentation followed before the Drummond Castle successfully delivered South African fruit to Britain in 1892.

The difference wasn’t the ships. It was the land-side infrastructure—proper pre-cooling, cold storage before loading, careful handling during the loading process. The Graaff family’s establishment of Imperial Cold Storage in 1899 provided the missing link that made South African fruit exports viable.

The South African Connection: From the PPECB’s establishment in 1926 to modern reefer container operations at the Port of Cape Town, South African cold chain infrastructure traces directly to these pioneering voyages. The lesson learned in 1889—that refrigerated transport fails without proper pre-cooling—remains the most common cause of cold chain breaks today.

Read the full article: The Ships That Made Continents Neighbours →

Part 3: Road — The Self-Taught Genius Who Created Perpetual Winter

Frederick Jones and the Refrigerated Truck

Frederick McKinley Jones had no formal engineering education. Orphaned young, he taught himself mechanics working in garages and reading technical manuals. By his thirties, he had a reputation across Minnesota as the man who could fix anything.

In 1937, a golf course conversation led to a challenge: could Jones design a practical refrigeration system for trucks? Within three years, he had patented the first successful truck-mounted refrigeration unit—a self-contained system that maintained temperature whether the truck was moving or parked.

The Thermo King Corporation, which Jones co-founded, supplied refrigerated trucks to the U.S. military during World War II—transporting blood plasma, food, and medications to troops across Europe and the Pacific. After the war, his technology enabled the supermarket revolution. Frozen food sections, year-round fresh produce, nationwide dairy distribution—all depended on refrigerated trucking that Jones made possible.

Jones became the first Black member of the American Society of Refrigeration Engineers and, posthumously, the first African American to receive the National Medal of Technology.

The South African Connection: Every Thermo King and Carrier unit on South African roads descends from Jones’s original designs. The engineering challenges he solved—shock resistance, self-contained power, temperature control—remain central to transport refrigeration. And the altitude effects that reduce refrigeration capacity in Gauteng represent exactly the kind of real-world operating condition that Jones designed his systems to handle.

Read the full article: The Self-Taught Genius Who Created Perpetual Winter →

Part 4: Air — From Devonshire Cream to Vaccine Supply Chains

How Air Freight Became the Cold Chain’s Express Lane

The world’s first scheduled international air service, launched between London and Paris in 1919, carried a single passenger—and cargo that included Devonshire cream, jam, and grouse.

Perishables flew before regular passengers did. The operators understood that if aeroplanes could move cargo faster than any other transport, perishable goods would benefit most.

Air freight cold chains enabled industries that couldn’t exist otherwise. East African floriculture—Kenya and Ethiopia now supply nearly half of Europe’s cut flowers—depends entirely on air freight. Flowers cut in the morning reach Amsterdam auction houses the same day.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated air freight cold chain’s critical importance for pharmaceuticals. Vaccines requiring ultra-cold storage (-70°C) moved from manufacturers to every continent within weeks—a logistics achievement that would have been impossible without decades of cold chain infrastructure development.

The South African Connection: While South Africa isn’t a major flower exporter, air freight cold chains are increasingly important for pharmaceutical distribution. As local vaccine manufacturing expands (Biovac and others), cold chain logistics from production facilities to distribution points becomes critical infrastructure.

Read the full article: From Devonshire Cream to Vaccine Supply Chains →

Part 5: Storage — The Invisible Infrastructure

How Cold Storage Became the Foundation of Modern Food Systems

Transport gets the attention—the trucks on highways, the containers at ports. But transport is useless without storage at each end. A refrigerated truck needs cold rooms to load from and deliver to. A reefer ship carries cargo between cold storage facilities on different continents.

Cold storage evolved from ice houses serving wealthy households to industrial facilities maintaining multiple temperature zones simultaneously. Modern cold stores manage deep frozen (-25°C), frozen (-18°C), chilled (+2°C to +4°C), and controlled atmosphere zones under one roof, serving diverse products with precise requirements.

South Africa’s cold storage sector traces to Imperial Cold Storage in 1899. Today, the country houses the majority of Africa’s cold storage capacity—infrastructure supporting domestic food distribution, agricultural exports, and pharmaceutical logistics.

The sector faces distinctive challenges. Load shedding threatens temperature integrity during power outages. Energy costs significantly impact operating economics. Capacity gaps in rural areas contribute to post-harvest losses estimated at millions of tonnes annually.

The South African Connection: The projected growth of South Africa’s cold chain market from $6.3 billion to over $20 billion by 2030 depends substantially on cold storage investment. The invisible foundation must expand to support the visible economy above it.

Read the full article: The Invisible Infrastructure →

Why History Matters for Modern Operations

The cold chain’s history isn’t academic. It’s practical knowledge that informs better decisions today.

• The physics haven’t changed. Cold air still sinks. Heat still transfers through inadequate insulation. Refrigeration equipment still loses capacity at altitude. The engineering principles Andrew Chase applied in 1878—top-mounted cooling, controlled ventilation, proper insulation—remain foundational.
• The failure modes persist. The Drummond Castle succeeded where earlier shipments failed because the fruit was properly pre-cooled before loading. Today, research on South African fruit exports consistently identifies the same vulnerable point: temperature breaks during the handoff from cold store to container. The lesson from 1892 still applies.
• Integration still wins. Swift’s vertical integration—controlling slaughter, transport, storage, and distribution—created competitive advantages his rivals couldn’t match. Modern cold chain operations that control multiple links consistently outperform fragmented alternatives.
• Documentation enables accountability. The PPECB was established in 1926 because export quality assurance required verification across multiple operators. Modern temperature monitoring systems serve the same purpose at vastly greater precision.

Understanding how the cold chain developed—what problems each innovation solved, what principles emerged from trial and error—provides context for evaluating equipment, designing operations, and making investment decisions.

The South African Cold Chain Story

South Africa’s cold chain infrastructure developed over more than a century:

• 1870s: Hex River Valley railway completed, enabling fruit transport from inland orchards to Cape Town port
• 1889: First fruit export attempt fails—cargo spoiled on arrival in Britain
• 1892: Drummond Castle successfully delivers South African fruit to UK markets
• 1899: Imperial Cold Storage established—South Africa’s first cold storage facility
• 1926: PPECB established to regulate perishable exports
• 1935: Roslin Castle arrives—first purpose-built refrigerated ship for SA fruit exports
• 1950s-1960s: Mechanical refrigeration replaces ice in transport; containerisation begins
• 1970s-1980s: Reefer container adoption accelerates; cold storage consolidation begins
• 1990s-2000s: Digital temperature monitoring; controlled atmosphere technology adoption
• 2010s-present: Load shedding resilience investments; solar and battery backup systems; market projected to reach $20+ billion by 2030

This timeline reflects global cold chain development adapted to South African conditions—altitude challenges in Gauteng, energy constraints from load shedding, export-oriented infrastructure in the Western Cape, and the particular requirements of South African agricultural products.

Continue Exploring

The Cold Chain Origins Series

• Part 1: The Butcher Who Beat the Railroads (Rail)
• Part 2: The Ships That Made Continents Neighbours (Sea)
• Part 3: The Self-Taught Genius Who Created Perpetual Winter (Road)
• Part 4: From Devonshire Cream to Vaccine Supply Chains (Air)
• Part 5: The Invisible Infrastructure (Storage)

Related Resources

• Cold Chain Glossary — Technical terms and definitions
• Compliance Guide — R638 and temperature monitoring requirements
• Equipment Directory — Refrigeration suppliers and manufacturers
• Transport Directory — Refrigerated logistics providers

About This Series

The Cold Chain Origins series was developed by ColdChainSA to provide authoritative historical context for South African cold chain operations. Each article connects global cold chain development to local conditions and challenges, demonstrating how 150 years of innovation created the infrastructure the industry depends on today.

All articles include comprehensive source citations from industry publications, academic research, and historical documentation.

About ColdChainSA

ColdChainSA.com is South Africa’s dedicated cold chain industry directory and resource platform. We connect cold chain operators with equipment suppliers, technology providers, and service companies while providing authoritative technical content on temperature-controlled logistics.

Founded on operational experience in refrigerated transport and a commitment to industry education, ColdChainSA serves as the definitive resource for South African cold chain professionals.