Every statistic on this page has been checked against the source linked beside it. Cite freely with attribution; we refresh this page and re-verify the figures periodically. Compiled by Igloo Thermo Logistics, a UK temperature-controlled carrier. Last verified July 2026.
The UK cold chain economy
- The UK cold chain contributes £14 billion in gross value added to UK GDP and supports 184,000 jobs, according to the Oxford Economics study behind the Cold Chain Report 2024 (Cold Chain Federation).
- The cold chain facilitated £53 billion in chilled and frozen food, beverage and pharmaceutical sales in 2023 (Cold Chain Federation, 2024).
- 49% of all food and beverages produced in the UK (worth £50 billion) require chilling or freezing (Cold Chain Report 2024).
- The UK cold chain logistics market is estimated at USD 9.75 billion in 2026, forecast to reach USD 11.87 billion by 2031, a 4.02% CAGR (Mordor Intelligence).
- Cold Chain Federation members operate 460 cold stores with over 40 million cubic metres of capacity (40,860,853 m³), a figure that grew more than 10% in a single year (Cold Chain Report 2022, via Cooling Post).
- The wider UK logistics sector generates £170 billion for the economy and employs over 8% of the national workforce (Logistics UK, Logistics Report 2025).
Food on the road
- 81% of all UK freight moves by road (Road Haulage Association, 2025).
- GB-registered HGVs lifted 1.59 billion tonnes of goods in 2024 (up 2% on 2023) and moved 168 billion tonne-kilometres (DfT Domestic Road Freight Statistics 2024).
- Food products (including beverages and tobacco) accounted for 222 million tonnes of that road freight (roughly 14% of all tonnage) and 30.9 billion tonne-kilometres (DfT table RFS0104, updated May 2026).
- The UK needs around 40,000 newly trained HGV drivers every year for the next five years (about 200,000 in total) to meet demand and replace leavers (RHA, February 2025).
- Zero-emission vans made up 9% of new UK van registrations in 2025 (up from 6% in 2024); zero-emission HGVs just 1.4% (up from 0.6%) (DfT Vehicle Licensing Statistics 2025).
Food waste and why temperature matters
- The UK generates around 10.2 million tonnes of food waste a year across households, farms, manufacturing, hospitality and retail (WRAP Key Facts, July 2025).
- Wasted food beyond the farm gate is worth over £22.3 billion a year, with the supply chain accounting for £4.8 billion of it (WRAP).
- The supply chain produced around 2.7 million tonnes of that waste in 2021: manufacturing 1.4 Mt, hospitality and food service 1.1 Mt, retail 0.2 Mt (WRAP).
- In food manufacturing, 3.8% of all food handled becomes waste; in retail it’s 0.44%. Most of the value at risk sits between factory and shelf, which is where transport lives (WRAP).
- Around 3.6 million tonnes of food surplus and waste occur in UK primary production annually: about 7% of the harvest, worth £1.2 billion (WRAP, 2019).
- Keeping fridges below 5°C could prevent more than 50,000 tonnes of UK milk waste a year. WRAP found the typical home fridge runs 2°C warmer than the recommended range (WRAP, 2018). Temperature discipline matters at every link in the chain, ours included.
Energy and emissions
- Trucks and vans fitted with transport refrigeration units emit around 11% more CO₂ than equivalent unrefrigerated vehicles (Zemo Partnership / DfT study, October 2024).
- The UK’s refrigerated road fleet adds over 5,600 kilotonnes of CO₂ a year to road transport emissions, more than 80% of it from refrigerated HGVs (Zemo Partnership, 2024).
- About 20% of a temperature-controlled vehicle’s total energy consumption goes on refrigeration (Evans & Peters, Institute of Refrigeration, 2021).
- Food refrigeration is responsible for an estimated 2–4% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and more than 60% of UK food depends on the cold chain (Evans & Peters, IOR 2021, citing Carbon Trust).
The rules the cold chain runs on
- UK law requires most chilled food that could support harmful bacterial growth to be held at or below 8°C (Food Safety (Temperature Control) Regulations 1995, reg. 4). In practice, retailers and manufacturers specify much tighter bands: our chilled work runs at 0°C to +5°C.
- The Food Standards Agency estimates the UK suffers about 2.4 million cases of foodborne disease a year (FSA), with a total societal cost put at around £9 billion a year (FSA, 2018 estimate).
- BRCGS food-safety certification, the benchmark retailers audit against, is held by over 22,000 sites in more than 130 countries (BRCGS). All four Igloo sites hold BRC Grade AA.
- The DVSA Earned Recognition scheme, which lets the regulator monitor an operator’s compliance data directly instead of roadside stops, currently has just 141 accredited operators across the UK (DVSA, updated July 2026). Igloo is a founder member. More on our fleet page.
Citing this page
Quote any figure with a link to this page or, better, to the primary source beside it. If you need the underlying context for a stat, or you move chilled or frozen product and want a carrier that treats numbers this carefully, talk to us.
