Why summer is a documented quality problem in this trade

One of the suppliers the Journal tracks has suspended shipping to Canada following a run of consignments detained at the border. No statement has been published; the suspension is visible only in the checkout process, which no longer accepts addresses in that market. We have written to ask whether it is permanent and whether affected customers are being refunded.

Transit times on the lane moved from a median of nine days to a median of 8. Phase-change cold packs of the type commonly used in this trade are typically specified for 72 to 120 hours depending on configuration and ambient profile, which puts a substantial fraction of these shipments outside specification for the majority of the journey.

Three of the twenty companies in the Journal’s dossier programme ship without any temperature indicator. On our own purchasing record, an unindicated parcel is not a parcel that stayed cold; it is a parcel about which nothing is known. Suppliers that require indicator evidence for a replacement claim while shipping no indicator have constructed an unfalsifiable position.

Nkosana Dube, pharmaceutical procurement adviser, said the classification change would resolve itself. "These things always do, once the brokers learn the new code. The cost lands on whoever shipped in the first fortnight."

We have asked three suppliers whether they will begin shipping indicators as standard. Two have replied; the answers are in their dossiers.