As a traditional cold chain logistics provider, how did Roundday Logistics grow from a single cold storage facility in Wugu into one of Taiwan’s few third-party logistics providers capable of full-channel distribution and one-stop services backed by quality control?

With 30 years of experience in cold chain logistics, Roundday Logistics began as a small cold storage facility—FRESH & FREQ—in Wugu, New Taipei. From its beginnings in Wugu Industrial Park, the company has since built eight cold chain logistics centers, cold storage facilities, and transfer stations across Taiwan. Its ongoing projects include a new logistics center in Yilan, scheduled for completion in November, and Taiwan’s first fresh food smart logistics park, which broke ground earlier this year in Dalin, Chiayi.

Roundday has gone beyond providing comprehensive and efficient logistics services. Over the years, it has continued to build on its core strengths, expanding its capabilities and integrating more stages of the cold chain. The Dalin Smart Fresh Food Logistics Park shows this evolution in action, bringing together service integration, value-added processing, and traceability mechanisms in one facility.

Starting with Food Safety: Strengthening Source Control for Fresh Produce

“Dalin in Chiayi represents a new generation of cold chain logistics parks in Taiwan. It is a concept that did not exist in the past,” said Roundday Logistics Chairman Chen Hsu-Chu.

Chen explained that conventional logistics centers mainly focus on cargo consolidation and distribution. By contrast, the Dalin park integrates post-harvest processing at the production stage to better preserve the freshness of fruits and vegetables. Starting with source control, the park covers storage, processing, packaging, and transportation, building a one-stop, next-generation cold chain system from a food safety perspective. The aim is to make the park a trusted source of consistently safe and high-quality fresh produce.

Chen emphasized that cold chain logistics is fundamentally about temperature control, and temperature management is directly tied to food safety. Therefore, in implementing smart logistics, Roundday’s top priority is to use IoT technologies to monitor temperatures during storage and transportation, ensuring an unbroken cold chain throughout the entire process.

To reduce human error in cold chain operations, the company not only uses IoT devices for real-time monitoring, but also adopts blockchain technology for its transparency and tamper-proof nature. Once production records are digitized, real-time information from the production line can be shared with every company in the supply chain, and may even be extended to full food traceability systems in the future.

In addition, shipment records between logistics providers and clients traditionally relied on paper documents. Through blockchain-enabled smart contracts, the time and manpower required for verification can be significantly reduced.

Smart Logistics Tailored to Operational Needs

When it comes to smart logistics, Chen Hsu-Chu sums it up simply: “Smart logistics is not about using the most advanced technology. It is about using the right technology for the right need.”

But identifying those needs requires countless rounds of communication, discussion, and refinement. Broad ideas must be filtered and distilled into practical requirements. As Chen pointed out, “thinking” and “doing” are often two very different things, and implementation requires a painful but necessary period of trial, adjustment, and debugging.

“As a third-party logistics provider, serving multiple parties is inherently difficult,” said Chen. “Every hypermarket, supermarket, convenience store, traditional distributor, and restaurant chain has different service requirements. Even delivery timing comes with its own nuances. Since we provide customized services, setting a single standard is actually not easy.”

This shows that time management is a major cost factor in logistics, while load efficiency is another key consideration. Chen put it simply: “For logistics, density is everything.”

Cargo must be consolidated for shared distribution, following the hub concept. The key is to determine how to save the most time and labor while minimizing waste, and then decide what logistics technologies are needed to achieve that goal.

For example, ICT tools can be used to track vehicle routes, allowing the system to determine which vehicle should enter first, what cargo it should carry, and where it should be delivered. This improves overall logistics efficiency. Inside the warehouse, location management, product identification systems, and handheld devices help accelerate sorting and picking operations.

In other words, technology enables logistics personnel to follow SOP-driven processes more smoothly, reducing errors caused by human judgment.

Building a Transparent and Efficient Logistics Ecosystem

In an era where channels dominate, distribution channels often hold the bargaining power. Since third-party logistics providers must adapt to client demands, they often have little say. Chen believes that if logistics companies focus only on serving channel needs, they will eventually be constrained by those channels.

Instead, he argues that third-party logistics providers should make better use of their integration strengths to build a more balanced and efficient ecosystem. By applying smart technologies to examine the safety of every process, both producers and consumers can benefit, while Taiwan’s food safety standards and cold chain logistics efficiency can also be improved.

Roundday Logistics has a clear goal: to build a transparent and efficient supply-demand matching platform where efficiency is shared by all participants. The first step is to build a sufficient network of logistics centers across Taiwan as the foundation, and to use technology to make goods movement more visible, controllable, and efficient.

Looking ahead, the company also aims to introduce Japan’s consumer co-operative model. Under this model, members order fresh food online, products undergo strict inspection, and goods are delivered directly from the place of origin to households. Similar to a group-buying system with regular delivery functions, consumers can place orders through the platform and receive products directly through cold chain delivery.

Conclusion

Roundday began investing in smart cold chain logistics early on, and much of its ICT infrastructure is now in place. The company has also established dedicated partnerships to co-develop a range of solutions, using its own operations as an ideal testing and demonstration site. In the future, these solutions may be extended to other players in the industry.

Moving beyond the constraints of traditional logistics, Roundday Logistics continues to transform and evolve, steadily advancing toward becoming a supply chain integrator for Taiwan’s fresh food industry.

Reprinted from asmag.com.tw