The Strawberry Quality management during Sea transportation

In Portugal, strawberry suppliers manage their fruit shipments, even using sea transportation once they regularly fulfill the Madeira and Azores Islands domestic markets. The quality management must be done from an end-to-end perspective, starting with the manual harvesting, passing to the tight quality control in multiple checkpoints, to the efficient flow of the operations. Establishing a meticulous flow chart is crucial to eliminate unnecessary manipulations and assure essential milestones such as a quick refrigeration step immediately after harvesting and a good cold storage capacity until the final dispatch on the loading docks.