2.5. Fresh fish chain scenario
For demonstration purposes of the RFID smart tag, an intercontinental
fresh fish logistic chain was selected, the South African
fresh hake commercial chain to the European market (Fig. 2). This
chain begins with the fish capture and transport to the processing
factory in refrigerated trucks. At the factory the fish is gutted, sized
and packed in polystyrene boxes. At that moment, alphanumeric
tags including country of origin, product specie, net weight, catch
date, method and vessel, presentation, size and all necessary data
are attached to the boxes. Then, a refrigerated truck transports
the fish boxes from the processing factory to the origin airport in
South Africa in a 12 h journey. The flight to the destination airport
in Europe takes about 12 h long. Once in Europe, in the logistic
company the fish boxes are re-organised according to their destination
and are re-expedited to the wholesalers. Finally, another
refrigerated truck transports the fish boxes to the retailers. The
whole logistic chain can take about 3 days from the capture of
the fish to the consumer.ery 2
min, and were switched on at the same time.
Power consumption tests were also conducted to ensure enough
battery on the tag for the field tests. For this tests the packaged
prototypes were kept measuring temperature and humidity
every 15 min for 15 days. This period is longer than the time required
for the fresh fish logistic chain monitoring.