Short answer. A cold-chain distributor in Algeria wins in 2027 on two things: the alert before the loss (a probe in every cold room, every fridge and every truck body, a threshold, a duration, a person to call, at night and at the weekend) and the proof at delivery (the route’s temperature curve, signed, attached to every delivery note, archived by batch). The first decides how much stock gets lost each year; the second decides whether the pharmacist, the supermarket and the inspector take your word or your record. Both are built on one platform: probes and gateways, alerts, batches and routes, client app, dashboard.
This guide is for the pharmaceutical wholesaler, the medicine importer or manufacturer, the distributor of frozen food, ice cream or dairy, the restaurant or supermarket chain with a fridge per site, the laboratory or pharmacy network, and the diaspora founder launching a fresh or frozen brand from France. It does not restate the agency’s guide, which has to be read in full; it describes what a company builds to apply it without an employee copying a display.
What the numbers say
The framework became clearer in early 2026. The National Agency for Pharmaceutical Products, under the Ministry of Pharmaceutical Industry, put online a guide to good distribution and storage practices for pharmaceutical products and medical devices, dated 2026. It sets temperature categories, controlled ambient 15 to 25 °C, “cool” 8 to 15 °C, refrigerated 2 to 8 °C, frozen around −20 °C, ultra-frozen around −70 °C, and asks, on our reading, for temperature mapping before a storage area is first used, probes and loggers placed at the hottest and coldest points, periodic calibration, tested alarm thresholds, emergency procedures for any drift, maintained and calibrated monitoring equipment in temperature-controlled vehicles, planning per flow with maximum transit time and adapted measures for the far South, readings handed to clients who ask for them, and indicators such as the number of excursions and the rate of deliveries compliant at receipt. It is a guide; its exact reach for each establishment is to be checked with the agency.
Those it concerns are many. The ministry publishes dated lists of licensed wholesale distributors: by our count, the list of 26 February 2026 holds close to 385 establishments licensed for pharmaceutical products, 240 of them also for medical devices, and a “cleaned” list of 14 May 2026 holds about 270; the exact figure depends on the date and the scope. Add the manufacturers, more than 200 production units according to ministry figures reported by the press, covering more than 80 % of national needs in 2026, every batch of which leaves a temperature-controlled warehouse.
Food cold storage is an even bigger building site. A cold-chain expert estimated in May 2026 that Algeria has about 3 to 4 million cubic metres of refrigerated capacity, far from a target of 12 to 15 million by 2035, that a national programme of 50 cold warehouses totalling 350,000 cubic metres has been entrusted to the public company Frigomedit, and that fruit and vegetable losses are “often estimated between 20 and 30 %”. An Algiers logistics operator, for its part, advertises more than 45,000 square metres of refrigerated warehouses and 130 geolocated refrigerated trucks. And summer does the rest: Météo Algérie put northern wilayas on alert at 45 to 48 °C on 17 July 2025, temperatures at which a truck body opened ten times per route does not hold its range unless someone is watching.
A refrigerated parcel in six moments
The cold chain breaks at the transitions, not in the middle of a cold room. Six moments, from the receiving dock to the client’s signature.
Receipt is the first reading: temperature when the parcel or truck is opened, batch number, photo of the supplier’s indicator or logger, accepted or refused. Without that reading, anything that arrives already warm will be blamed on the distributor. The cold room is mapped once, with probes at the hottest points, by the door and near the ceiling, and the coldest, against the evaporator; after that the curve is continuous and needs no hands. Picking is the first gap: a refrigerated order taken out at 9 am and loaded at 11 am has spent two hours at ambient temperature; time out of the cold is counted per order, with a cooler or insulated box for the waits.
The truck carries a logger in the body, not on the dashboard: the curve per route, the position and the door openings say what the product went through, stop by stop. The alert is the moment that counts: a threshold, a duration, a person. Above 8 °C for thirty minutes, the driver gets a message, then the depot manager, then the responsible pharmacist; the response is written in advance, delivery reordered, route cut short, return to the depot. Delivery, finally, produces the proof: the route’s curve, signed by the client, attached to the note, archived by batch, for the pharmacist who asks for it, for the supermarket that demands it and for the inspection that will read it one day.
Why the alert is the product, and the proof the second
The logger sold with the fridge shows a curve, after the fact, to whoever comes to download it. The distributor needs the opposite view: the whole fleet, sorted by what is out of range right now.
The field reports temperature in three ways. In a depot with a network, Wi-Fi probes or a LoRa gateway cover the cold rooms and fridges; in a truck, a Bluetooth or 4G logger in the body; in a delivery cooler, a Bluetooth tag read by the driver’s phone. When the site has neither Wi-Fi nor fibre, a gateway with a SIM card sends the readings and keeps them in memory when the network drops. We describe this chain, sensor, gateway, server, dashboard, in the internet of things in Algeria.
Alerts are the layer that avoids the loss: a high threshold and a low one, because insulin and vaccines survive freezing no better than heat, a duration before shouting, so as not to wake the depot at every door opening, and an escalation, driver, depot manager, responsible pharmacist, with the switch to the generator or the transfer to another room written in advance. Operations are the daily work: batches, orders, routes, returns, recalls by batch, and the date of the last check of every probe, every cooling unit and the generator. The client receives the proof of delivery with the curve and can download a certificate per batch. Management sees the month’s excursions, the rate of compliant deliveries, the stock exposed and the losses avoided. That last line is what pays for the probes.
«The fridge’s logger shows a curve after the fact. The distributor needs to see the whole fleet, sorted by what is out of range right now.»
A worked example
An example on assumptions, to redo with your numbers: a distributor with four cold rooms, twelve trucks and three hundred deliveries a day.
The outage. A breaker trips on a Saturday at 11 pm, the generator does not start. Without a connected probe, the room warms all night and all Sunday, and the depot manager finds out on Monday at 7 am in front of a thermometer at 14 °C and a stock to throw away: at 3,000 cartons of refrigerated products averaging 1,000 dinars, about 3 million dinars per room, assumption. With a threshold at 8 °C, a thirty-minute duration and an escalation, the guard is called at 11:40 pm, the depot manager at 11:50 pm, the generator restarted or the stock transferred before midnight, and the exposure time is computed per batch to decide what is kept.
The trucks. The first summer month’s curves show that two trucks of twelve drop above 10 °C every afternoon over the last ten stops, assumption: tired cooling unit, worn door seal. Without curves, those two trucks have been delivering warm for months without anyone knowing, and the client is the one who finds out. The proof. Three hundred deliveries a day each get a temperature curve attached to the note, produced by the system, without an employee copying a display; that is what the wholesaler shows the pharmacist, the ice-cream distributor shows the supermarket, and both show the inspector.
Six silent breaches
None gives warning, and most happen when nobody is at the depot: at night, at the weekend, on the road.
The power cut at night is the costliest breach, because it lasts: the platform sees the lost power and the rising curve at the same time, calls the guard and then the depot manager, and computes exposure time per batch. The door left open is the most frequent: stocktake, stuck trolley, door wedge; a probe at the hot spot by the door and a door contact give an alert at ten minutes. The truck cooling unit dropping out is the summer breach: at 45 °C in the shade, ten stops and ten openings, the body follows the road; the curve per route alerts the driver, the route is reordered or cut short.
The parcel forgotten on the dock is the transition breach: picked at 9 am, loaded at 11 am; the platform counts time out of the cold per order and blocks the parcel at loading if the limit is exceeded. The product frozen by mistake is the breach nobody looks for: a fridge set too low, a carton against the cold wall; it takes a low threshold as well as a high one, and a quarantine per batch. The probe offline or never calibrated is the most insidious: dead battery, changed Wi-Fi, or a probe reading two degrees too high for a year and reassuring everyone; the platform tells “no data” from “out of range”, and keeps each probe’s calibration date with a reminder before it is due.
Seen in France: what pharmacies and wholesalers have, what changes here
In France, the pharmacy cold chain has been tooled for a long time. The National Order of Pharmacists’ recommendations on products kept between 2 and 8 °C, published in 2006 and revised in 2009, ask for continuous temperature recording, including when the pharmacy is closed, an alarm in case of deviation or prolonged opening, and a qualification of the refrigerator by 24-hour mapping, often at nine points; the trade press now describes connected probes that have replaced manual downloads. On the wholesale side, good wholesale distribution practices apply to every establishment, and the medicines agency publishes injunctions when they are not followed. The result is a market where the temperature curve is an ordinary piece of the file, not a favour.
What changes in Algeria decides the product. The heat: alerts at 45 to 48 °C in northern wilayas in July 2025, and more further south, which makes the truck body the most exposed link, well before the cold room. The distances: the agency’s guide explicitly asks for adapted measures for remote areas and the far South, maximum transit time and transfer points; a route to Tamanrasset is not a route to Blida. Electricity: the night outage and the generator that does not start are scenarios to write, not accidents. The network: depots without fibre, trucks out of coverage for hours; the probe must keep its readings in memory and send them later, and the platform must tell “no data” from “out of range”. The tool is therefore built around the truck, the outage and the far South, not copied from software designed for air-conditioned warehouses 300 kilometres apart.
«Here the most exposed link is not the cold room: it is the truck body, at 45 °C, opened ten times per route.»
From France: launching a fresh or frozen brand, following a depot
Two projects keep coming from the diaspora. The first: launching a frozen-food, ice-cream or fresh-produce brand in Algeria, seen in France at a specialist retailer or in the supermarkets, with a workshop, a depot and a few trucks run on site by a partner or a manager. The second: following an existing depot or fleet, whose manager says “the cold is fine” while no curve can show it, as a supermarket sends back a thawed pallet.
The answer is the same platform, seen from another country. The founder sees every room and every truck, the month’s excursions, the rate of compliant deliveries and the losses avoided, site by site, with a written monthly report; night alerts go to the manager on site, summaries to the founder. The end client, supermarket or restaurant, receives the proof of delivery, and that is what gets a new brand into an already full frozen aisle. We describe the same remote-oversight logic, accounts in the founder’s name, dashboard, written report, in running a business in Algeria from France.
Who you are
Six profiles, six first versions. The first column is built in twelve weeks, probes included; the second follows as the network grows.
The wholesaler starts with the cold rooms, because that is where the value sleeps: mapping, probes, alerts with escalation, curves per batch; then the trucks and the proof of delivery per pharmacy, then the monthly report. The importer or manufacturer has a warehouse and subcontracted carriers: receipt with reading, quarantine per batch, then tracking of the subcontractors and an excursion file ready to hand to the agency the day it asks. The food distributor starts with the trucks, because that is where the heat strikes: loggers in the bodies, alert to the driver, routes reordered, then the proof for supermarkets and the fridges at points of sale. We describe the routes and drivers side in delivery and distribution management software.
The restaurant, butcher or supermarket chain has a sites problem, not a trucks problem: one probe per fridge per site, automatic readings, an alert to the manager, then a register per site and suppliers compared on their delivery curves. The laboratory, clinic or pharmacy network protects vaccine and reagent fridges at night and at the weekend, with a register per fridge and planned calibration; for a pharmacy network this adds to what we describe in the pharmacy with three outlets. The diaspora founder wants the remote view described above. In every case the first version fits in twelve weeks, as we detail in how long it takes to build a platform in 2027.
The 2027 calendar
The cold chain has one season: summer. Everything set before June serves in July; everything discovered in July costs a stock.
January and February: the cold rooms. Mapping of every room, probes at hot and cold spots, high and low thresholds, duration, escalation written with names and numbers. It is the cold, quiet season; that is when you equip. March and April: the trucks. One logger per body, drivers trained to read an alert and reorder a route, the first curves that reveal the fragile trucks before the heat. May and June: the proof. The curve attached to every delivery, the client app, the certificate per batch; before summer, because summer is when clients will ask for it.
July and August: service. Heat alerts, shortened routes, failed cooling units, outages; that is what the platform is for, and every excursion avoided is counted. September and October: the indicators. The quarter’s excursions, the rate of compliant deliveries, calibrations, self-inspection with the curves at hand. November and December: the extension. Subcontracted carriers, fridges at points of sale, annual report to clients, contracts for 2028. A distributor who follows this calendar reaches summer 2027 with tuned probes and a tested escalation, instead of discovering both in front of a room at 14 °C.
What makes this kind of platform fail
- Probes without escalation. An alert sent to an address nobody reads on Saturday night is worth a thermometer; the list of people to call, in order, is decided before the first probe.
- A single threshold. Freezing destroys insulin and vaccines as surely as heat; without a low threshold, a badly set fridge looks exemplary.
- The logger on the truck’s dashboard. The cab is air-conditioned, the body is not; the probe goes with the product.
- Alerts that cry wolf. If the platform does not tell “no data” from “out of range”, the depot stops reading alerts within a month.
- No calibration date. A probe reading two degrees too high reassures everyone for a year; every probe carries its check date and its reminder.
- Proof built “later”. The curve per delivery is produced from the first equipped route; it is what the client pays for, and it cannot be reconstructed afterwards.
- Accounts in the provider’s name. Gateways, SIM cards, server, probe makers’ portals: in the distributor’s name from day one, or its curves belong to someone else.
Frequently asked questions
The questions we get from wholesalers, distributors and site owners.
- Do we need to replace our cold rooms or trucks to equip them?
- No. Probes are fitted into what exists: Wi-Fi or LoRa probes in rooms and fridges, Bluetooth or 4G loggers in truck bodies, tags in coolers. A gateway with a SIM card covers a depot without fibre. What changes is the platform that receives everything and alerts.
- What happens when the truck is out of coverage for three hours?
- The logger keeps its readings in memory and sends them when the network returns; the route’s curve is complete. Meanwhile the platform shows “no data”, not “out of range”, and the driver sees the live temperature on their phone over Bluetooth.
- Are our paper readings enough for the agency and for our clients?
- The 2026 guide asks for records, probes at critical points, calibration and transport readings; what exactly it accepts is to be checked with the agency. A continuous, time-stamped curve, archived by batch and attached to the delivery, answers more questions than a notebook, and is produced without an employee copying it.
- How long until a usable first version?
- About twelve weeks for the cold rooms and the first trucks: probes, alerts with escalation, batches, curves, dashboard. Proof of delivery and the client app follow, then subcontractors and points of sale. We detail real timelines in the guide on how long a platform takes to build.
- I am launching a frozen-food brand from France, where do I start?
- With the trucks and the depot, with accounts in your name: loggers in the bodies, probes in the rooms, night alerts to the manager on site and summaries to you, then proof of delivery for the supermarkets, which is your argument for getting onto the shelf.
- Does a supermarket or a restaurant need the same tool as a wholesaler?
- No. It needs one probe per fridge per site, alerts to the manager and a register per site, then to compare its suppliers on the curves they attach to their deliveries. The first version is smaller, and it can read the proofs an equipped wholesaler sends it.