Cold Chain Monitoring Market - Global Industry Size, Share, Trends, Opportunity, and Forecast, 2021-2031

The Global Cold Chain Monitoring Market is projected to experience substantial growth, rising from USD 23.02 Billion in 2025 to USD 81.77 Billion by 2031, representing a CAGR of 23.52%. This market encompasses integrated ecosystems of hardware and software designed to track, record, and regulate environmental variables - such as temperature, humidity, and location - for goods sensitive to thermal fluctuations during storage and transit. The sector is primarily fueled by the enforcement of strict regulatory standards for food and pharmaceutical safety, including Good Distribution Practice (GDP) guidelines, which require precise environmental oversight to guarantee product efficacy and safety. Furthermore, the globalization of trade in perishable items creates a fundamental need for robust monitoring systems to mitigate financial losses and spoilage, serving as a key driver for technological adoption.

Despite this strong growth potential, the market encounters a significant obstacle regarding the high initial capital investment needed to upgrade legacy infrastructure with modern monitoring capabilities. This financial hurdle often discourages small and medium-sized logistics operators from implementing advanced tracking solutions, potentially slowing widespread market penetration. To highlight the growing industry scale requiring such oversight, data from the Global Cold Chain Alliance indicates that in 2025, the total temperature-controlled capacity managed by its members hit 231 million cubic meters, marking a growth of over 10 percent from the prior year. This considerable expansion in infrastructure emphasizes the critical and increasing necessity for reliable monitoring mechanisms throughout the global supply chain.

Market Drivers

The rising demand for temperature-sensitive biologics and pharmaceuticals serves as a primary driver for the Global Cold Chain Monitoring Market. As the healthcare industry pivots toward high-value, biologically derived treatments - such as insulin, gene therapies, and vaccines - the necessity for precise, uninterrupted temperature regulation becomes critical to prevent degradation and ensure patient safety. This increase in complex therapeutics forces logistics providers to implement real-time tracking systems and advanced data loggers that surpass basic regulatory compliance to maintain total asset visibility. Highlighting this trend, IAG Cargo reported in a March 2025 release titled 'IAG Cargo reports surges in global pharmaceutical shipments' that there was a 22% year-over-year increase in tonnage for its temperature-controlled Constant Climate product in 2024, emphasizing the growing volume of medical cargo requiring strict oversight.

Additionally, the expansion of cross-border trade and global cold chain logistics is significantly broadening the scope of the market. The globalization of supply chains requires robust oversight mechanisms to prevent financial loss and spoilage across long-haul transit routes, particularly for specialized medical products and perishable foods moving through various climatic zones.

This geographic reach drives the adoption of integrated hardware and software solutions to maintain asset visibility, thereby reducing risks associated with fragmented handling chains. Illustrating this rapid sectoral growth, Air Cargo Week noted in a December 2025 article, 'e-commerce, perishables and personalised medicine reshape air cargo priorities,' that the volume of cool goods transported by air increased by 62 percent year-on-year. Furthermore, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported in 2025 that global air cargo demand rose by 11.3% in 2024, indicating a strong trajectory for monitoring technologies.

Market Challenges

Based on the market landscape, the primary challenge hindering growth is the substantial initial capital investment required to retrofit legacy infrastructure. The significant financial outlay needed to upgrade existing cold chain facilities acts as a major barrier to the widespread adoption of monitoring technologies. Many logistics operators, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), utilize older transportation fleets and warehousing systems that are not inherently compatible with modern digital tracking platforms. Retrofitting this legacy infrastructure necessitates purchasing expensive connectivity hardware and sensors, as well as funding complex software integration. This creates a fragmented market where smaller players cannot justify the return on investment despite operational risks, effectively limiting the total addressable market for solution providers.

Consequently, this inability to affordably modernize infrastructure sustains inefficiencies across the global supply chain. Without the capital to install precise environmental controls, a large volume of temperature-sensitive goods continues to spoil before reaching the consumer. To illustrate the scale of these inefficiencies, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that in 2024, approximately 13.2 percent of food produced globally was lost in the supply chain between harvest and the retail stage. This persistent loss rate suggests that while the technology exists to preserve these products, the high cost of implementation prevents the comprehensive market penetration required to significantly reduce wastage.

Market Trends

The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence for Predictive Supply Chain Analytics is fundamentally transforming the market by shifting operations from reactive monitoring to proactive risk management. Advanced algorithms now process extensive datasets from cold chain sensors to forecast potential equipment failures and temperature excursions before they happen, enabling logistics providers to intervene and prevent spoilage. This strategic evolution is gaining momentum among industry leaders who regard predictive intelligence as essential for maintaining the integrity of complex biological and perishable supply chains. Underscoring this increased focus, a Maersk report from October 2025 titled 'Cold Chain Innovation in the Middle East: IoT, AI & Blockchain' noted that C-Suite mentions of artificial intelligence in logistics strategy discussions rose from 130 in 2022 to 190 in 2024, reflecting a sharp rise in high-level corporate commitment to these technologies.

Simultaneously, the shift from passive data loggers to real-time IoT-enabled sensors is rapidly addressing the critical visibility gaps associated with legacy tracking methods. Unlike passive loggers that only offer retrospective data after a shipment has arrived, modern IoT sensors broadcast live environmental conditions, facilitating immediate corrective actions such as rerouting or equipment adjustments during transit. This capability is becoming an essential requirement for shippers who need to guarantee product quality and minimize financial losses due to supply chain blind spots. Highlighting the urgency of this transition, a SeaVantage article from September 2025, 'Real-Time Supply Chain Visibility: The Ultimate Guide for 2025,' revealed that 57% of supply chain professionals still cite a lack of real-time visibility as their single biggest operational challenge, driving the accelerated adoption of active monitoring hardware.

Key Players Profiled in the Cold Chain Monitoring Market

• ELPRO-BUCHS AG
• CARRIER
• Berlinger & Co. AG
• Savi Technology
• ORBCOMM
• GEOTAB INC.
• Monnit Corporation
• Controlant
• ZEST LABS, INC.
• INFRATAB, INC.

Report Scope

In this report, the Global Cold Chain Monitoring Market has been segmented into the following categories:

Cold Chain Monitoring Market, by Component:

• Hardware
• Software

Cold Chain Monitoring Market, by Application:

• Food & Beverages
• Pharmaceuticals

Cold Chain Monitoring Market, by Region:

• North America
• Europe
• Asia-Pacific
• South America
• Middle East & Africa

Competitive Landscape

Company Profiles: Detailed analysis of the major companies present in the Global Cold Chain Monitoring Market.

Available Customization

The analyst offers customization according to your specific needs. The following customization options are available for the report:

• Detailed analysis and profiling of additional market players (up to five).

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