TPM Cold Chain
A Cool Event
2026 Theme
Frozen in Place
It’s a curious place that refrigerated shippers find themselves at the midway point of 2025. On the one hand, global demand for perishables, frozen goods, and other reefer products is robust. Driven by strength in the Southern Hemisphere, total global volumes increased 9.3% in the first four months of 2025, according to Accenture Cargo. The growth continues a trend that started in 2024, when global reefer trade grew 4% following a flat 2023.
But a deeper dive into 2025 trends reveals troubling signs:
- While the Southern Hemisphere, particularly Brazil, South Africa, and parts of Southeast Asia are expanding their exports at rapid double-digit rates, two of the traditional export leaders — China and the United States — are growing at below-historical trends (China, up 10%) or retrenching (US, down 4%).
- On the imports side, US growth has picked up the pace from last year’s 7% growth to 10% in the first four months of the year, no doubt owing to the unrelenting pressure to beat various and changing deadlines attached to tariffs that have dominated the narrative since January under the second Trump administration.
- Investment in equipment has accelerated dramatically, with global manufacturing of reefer containers hitting at least a 10-year high, and yet the industry hasn’t been able to dent the gap in demand. Nearly 95,000 TEUs of new reefer containers entered the market in the first quarter of 2025, up some 145% from the same period in 2024, according to Drewry. By the time 2025 ends, the industry is expected to introduce nearly 350,000 TEUs of reefer equipment compared to 275,000-300,000 TEUs in an average year, Bob Sappio, CEO of equipment lessor SeaCube Containers, told the Journal of Commerce in July. And yet, the gap between how much is needed to meet demand may not close demonstrably because so much existing equipment is nearing retirement age.
- Meanwhile, shifting trade patterns, continuing disruption to shipping in the Red Sea, the realignment around ocean carrier alliances and their services, and longshore labor shortages are among the causes for intermittent port congestion in Europe the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 2021 and 2022 as global trade surged in the wake of COVID-19. For shippers of perishable goods, delays can mean loss of sales, at least, or, worse, destruction of product at a cost of millions of dollars.
- Regionally, drought and poor growing seasons have forced US agricultural companies to cull their cattle herds, straining other beef producers such as Brazil and sparking record-high beef prices.
All this is to say that refrigerated shippers again find themselves in a quandary, looking for long-term answers during a period of unrelenting volatility. Now in its third year, TPM Cold Chain offers a unique combination that can provide confidence amid the turmoil: two days of unmatched programming led by the pre-eminent cold chain consulting firm Eskesen Advisory, and high-level networking opportunities leading to shared experiences and shared solutions.