World Bank World Development IndicatorsIngested & cached
Country-year macro, energy-access, urbanisation and food-trade-share indicators.
Licence: CC BY 4.0. Open API, no key. Ingested server-side and cached; refreshed at most weekly.
Cold chain market data: 5, 10, 20 and 30-year country trends
Compare official World Bank and UN Comtrade data on the conditions that drive food cold-chain demand — electricity access, urbanisation, food trade and frozen perishables trade. Every series is a demand proxy, not installed cold-storage capacity, and every value keeps its source, year, unit and retrieval date.
Proxy, not capacity. No open, consistent global dataset of installed cold-storage capacity was available to ingest. Values shown are reported actuals for past years; no forecasts or estimates are mixed in.
Use market signals; validate the facility separately
For owners and developers comparing a country demand context. Annual series cannot answer seasonal peaks, warehouse vacancy, route reliability or site grid capacity. Add your dated operating and local logistics evidence before sizing a project.
Destination, season & logistics checklist
A project evidence checklist, not a seasonal forecast. Complete it for each destination using dated operating records, product specifications and responsible local specialists.
- Destination & handoffs
- Record origin, destination, transport mode, loading/unloading points, planned transit and expected waiting time. Identify who monitors temperature and handles excursions at each handoff.
- Season & peak capacity
- Record actual peak months, daily intake, dispatch, dwell time and highest stock from dated records. Label forecasts separately; do not turn an annual national trade indicator into a monthly demand estimate.
- Temperature & energy duty
- Use the product's approved temperature range, incoming temperature, packaging and loading schedule. Record site ambient assumptions, door-opening frequency, power availability and tariff period for capacity and energy comparisons.
- Site & unresolved risks
- Confirm grid, water where required, vehicle access and dock interfaces. Record the evidence owner, source date and unresolved constraint; leave unknown inputs blank rather than presenting them as verified.
Related source material: FAO post-harvest handling manual for food handling context; existing distribution planning guide and site due diligence checklist. This checklist does not establish a food/pharma specification, legal approval or engineered capacity.
Choose data
What it measures: Grid readiness for electric refrigeration — not cold-storage capacity.
- Source / units
- World Bank WDI · % of population
- Geography / period
- Selected reporting countries · annual observations, not seasons. National indicator; not a site-level measurement.
- Method / recency
- Reported source values, no interpolation or forecast. No retrieved rows yet for this selection. Missing years remain unavailable.
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Data source registry
Access checked 17 Oct 2026. Only sources marked "ingested" feed the charts.
UN Comtrade (public preview API)Ingested & cached
Annual reported export/import value (US$) and net weight for selected perishable HS codes, world partner total.
Licence: UN Comtrade terms of use (attribution required). Public preview endpoint without key: one year per request, max 500 rows. Full history/partners need a subscription key (not configured).
FAOSTATBlocked — API key needed
Crop/livestock production, food balances, trade.
Licence: CC BY 4.0. API returned 401 (authorization header required) on 2026-10-17. Use the original site until a token is configured.
USDA FAS Production, Supply & DistributionBlocked — API key needed
Commodity production, trade and stocks incl. USDA estimates/forecasts.
Licence: US Government public domain. API returned 403 'Bad API Key'; requires a free api.data.gov key (not configured).
FAO GIEWS Food Price Monitoring (FPMA)Linked only
Domestic retail/wholesale food prices by market.
Licence: FAO open data terms. No documented stable public API confirmed; tool is linked, not ingested.
OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2026-2035Linked only
10-year projections for agricultural commodities.
Licence: OECD/FAO terms. Projections publication; linked only. Any figure quoted from it is a PROJECTION.
Dated regulatory milestones that shape refrigeration demand
Three documented historical cases and what they mean for procurement
Each case uses only the cited public source. We give no figures beyond what the source states; follow the link for the original numbers and context.
EU F-gas quotas and high-GWP refrigerants (2014–2020)
What happened: Regulation (EU) No 517/2014 introduced an HFC quota phase-down from 2015 and, from 1 January 2020, prohibited servicing refrigeration equipment with a charge of 40 tonnes CO₂-equivalent or more using refrigerants of GWP 2,500 or more (recycled or reclaimed gas was exempt until 2030), which covers R404A. The 2014 Regulation has since been repealed and replaced by Regulation (EU) 2024/573.
Procurement lesson: refrigerant choice is a lifecycle decision. Ask suppliers which refrigerant, its GWP, and its service outlook over the plant's life.
Sources: EUR-Lex 517/2014; European Commission.
European electricity price shock (2021–2023)
What happened: Eurostat's half-yearly series shows EU non-household electricity prices excluding taxes rising from the second half of 2021, rising further through 2022 and peaking in the second half of 2022, then declining from 2023.
Procurement lesson: test proposals at several tariffs, not one. Insulation, door control and compressor efficiency matter more when power prices move.
Food loss after harvest (FAO, 2019)
What happened: FAO's State of Food and Agriculture 2019 estimated that around 14 % of food produced globally is lost after harvest and before reaching retail, including through on-farm activities, storage and transport.
Procurement lesson: size the room for actual throughput and storage days, and the cooling for real product pull-down, before comparing prices.
Source: FAO SOFA 2019.
Questions
- Does this show installed cold storage capacity?
- No. Every series is a demand proxy such as electricity access, urbanisation or perishable trade value. No open, consistent global dataset of installed cold-storage capacity was available to ingest.
- Where does the data come from?
- The World Bank World Development Indicators API (CC BY 4.0) and the UN Comtrade public preview API. Each row keeps its source link, year, unit and retrieval date.
- Are any values forecasts?
- No. All ingested values are reported actuals for past years. Projections such as the OECD-FAO Outlook are linked, not mixed into the charts.
Turn market signals into a project
Size the room, estimate energy and lifecycle cost, then submit a free project brief. The ColdMatch team reviews it, contacts suitable suppliers for you and presents organised responses.