Post by Charlotte Lattreuter

Over the past three months, my team (Alice Kreziak , Claire Sanders , Chloé Billard , Fernanda Ielpo ) and I worked on an ESCP company consultancy project in collaboration with the Kuehne Climate Center, focused on the next generation of reefers in the maritime industry. Reefer containers are a critical but often overlooked component of global trade. Despite strong fleet growth, increasing performance and environmental constraints, their core box design and refrigeration technologies have changed little since their introduction in the 1960s, relying largely on energy-intensive mechanical cooling systems. Our project aimed to look beyond business-as-usual developments and identify innovations capable of transforming reefer performance. We explored emerging and cross-industry solutions across key technical dimensions including insulation, energy and power systems, digitalisation, box design, and atmosphere control, while also assessing the scale of potential improvements and the barriers to implementation. Based on this work, we provided the Kuehne Climate Center with more than 20 operational interventions to support the implementation of the most promising solutions. We would like to thank Mark Major , Senior Strategy Director at the Kuehne Climate Center, for the opportunity to work on such an interesting topic, as well as Stephan Grabmeier, our supervisor, for his guidance and support over the three months.