Cold chain failures rarely start with a broken refrigeration unit. More often, they happen in the in-between moments, during handoffs, in back rooms, or when small temperature drifts go unnoticed for hours. In this interview, Giampaolo Marino, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Energous, explains why these blind spots persist and how real-time visibility could prevent spoilage, recalls, and costly disruptions across food supply chains.

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Supply Chain 24/7: Where do you see cold chain breakdowns happening most often today, and why are they so easy to miss? 

Giampaolo Marino: Cold chain breakdowns rarely happen at obvious failure points like a refrigeration unit shutting off. More often, they occur in the in-between moments – handoffs between transport and storage, overnight dwell times in back rooms, staging areas inside distribution centers, or during peak operational periods when processes are under pressure.

In these environments, temperature doesn’t usually spike dramatically. It drifts gradually, sometimes hovering just outside safe thresholds for hours, making problems easy to miss without continuous monitoring.

The core issue is that much of the industry still relies on point-in-time checks. A pallet may register “in range” when scanned, but that tells you nothing about what happened before or after. If a product spends several hours in marginal conditions, degradation may already be underway long before anyone notices.

These blind spots are amplified by operational complexity. Supply chains span multiple facilities, systems, and teams operating on different timelines. When visibility isn’t continuous, no single group sees the full picture, and failures remain invisible until they surface later as spoilage, quality loss, or safety issues.

SC247: What usually tips companies off that something went wrong? 

GM: In many cases, companies only realize something went wrong when there’s a downstream signal: product spoilage, failed quality checks, consumer complaints, or a regulatory inquiry. By the time those indicators appear, the product has already moved through multiple touchpoints (sometimes all the way to store shelves), leaving little opportunity to intervene.

The issue isn’t a lack of awareness, but a lack of timely insight. Traditional monitoring methods tend to surface problems after exposure has already occurred, often during audits or manual reviews. That lag removes the chance to act while conditions are still recoverable, as prolonged exposure just outside safe ranges can quietly compromise quality or safety without triggering an alert.

When issues are discovered late, teams are forced into defensive mode. Without continuous data, companies must assume worst-case exposure, which often leads to overly broad product holds or recalls. That drives unnecessary waste, disruption, and cost.

SC247: Why has temperature visibility been such a hard problem for food supply chains to fully solve? 

GM: Temperature visibility sits at the intersection of scale, cost, and operational friction. Food supply chains are vast, fast-moving, and highly distributed. Products pass through multiple environments in short timeframes, making continuous monitoring difficult to deploy and maintain.

Most legacy solutions were built for verification, not intelligence. Manual logs, spot checks, and battery-powered sensors introduce labor requirements, maintenance burdens, and coverage gaps. Companies are often forced to choose between partial visibility or added operational complexity.

Data fragmentation compounds the problem. Even when temperature data exists, it’s frequently delayed or siloed, limiting its usefulness in real-time decision-making.

What’s changing now is the ability to make sensing ambient and persistent. Wireless power approaches that keep sensor endpoints continuously operational remove many of the constraints that previously made full-scale monitoring impractical.

SC247: What changes when teams can see temperature issues in real time instead of after the fact? 

GM: Real-time visibility fundamentally changes behavior. Instead of treating temperature as something to be verified later, it becomes a live operational signal that teams can act on immediately.

This shifts cold chain management from reactive to proactive. When temperatures begin drifting, corrective actions can happen before product quality is compromised – adjusting storage conditions, accelerating movement, or isolating inventory early. Small interventions prevent small issues from becoming large losses.

Real-time data also aligns teams across stores, distribution centers, and quality functions. When everyone sees the same conditions simultaneously, decisions are made faster and with less ambiguity. Over time, continuous visibility reveals patterns that point-based checks could never surface, helping organizations identify vulnerable transitions and improve processes. The result is fewer incidents, more consistent execution, and clearer decision-making.

SC247: From your perspective, where does cold chain failure create the biggest business impact: spoilage, safety, brand trust, or all of the above? 

GM: It’s all of the above, and the impacts are closely linked. 

Spoilage is usually the first visible cost. Even minor temperature deviations can degrade freshness and increase shrink, directly hitting margins, especially at scale where small losses compound quickly.

Food safety raises the stakes further. Temperature excursions create conditions for bacterial growth, turning quality issues into potential health risks. Once safety is involved, regulatory scrutiny and recall exposure follow, dramatically increasing financial and operational impact.

Brand trust is often the most lasting consequence. Consumers don’t separate supply-chain failures from brand failures. A single incident can undermine years of trust, particularly in categories where freshness and safety define the value proposition.

What makes cold chain failure especially costly is that these impacts cascade. Continuous visibility helps break that chain early, before manageable deviations escalate into multi-dimensional business crises.

SC247: How are food companies thinking differently about freshness and safety as expectations around traceability keep rising? 

GM: Food companies are moving away from treating freshness and safety as static thresholds and toward managing them as continuous conditions. Rising expectations around transparency and traceability mean it’s no longer enough to confirm standards were met at checkpoints. Organizations increasingly need verified, time-based condition data that shows how products were handled throughout their journey.

This shift changes decision-making. Continuous data reduces reliance on assumptions, enables more targeted responses, and minimizes overly conservative actions that drive waste.

Freshness is also becoming a competitive differentiator, not just a compliance requirement. Companies that can demonstrate continuous control are better positioned to respond confidently to audits, investigations, and consumer scrutiny.

SC247: Looking ahead, what does “good” cold chain visibility actually look like for a modern food supply chain? 

GM: Good cold-chain visibility is continuous, automatic, and actionable. It doesn’t rely on manual checks or periodic scans, and it doesn’t add complexity for already stretched teams.

Instead, it operates in the background, delivering real-time condition data wherever risk exists – across facilities, storage areas, and transitions, not just during transport. Data flows into systems teams already use, triggering alerts, supporting audits, and informing decisions without delay.

Approaches like wirelessly powered sensors make always-on monitoring practical at scale. But technology alone isn’t the goal. Good visibility changes behavior. Teams trust the data, respond faster, and use insights to improve processes over time.

When conditions are always visible, failures become rarer, responses more precise, and food safety shifts from detection to prevention.

Giampaolo Marino is Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Energous.