Volume 2 - Issue 4, July - August 2026

Cold chain logistics preserves the quality, safety and shelf life of perishable food products and is a critical link between farm and fork, yet across India's fast-growing regional food hubs the system is repeatedly asked to do more with infrastructure it has already outgrown. This study examines the factors influencing the efficiency and sustainability of cold chain logistics systems in the food industry in Coimbatore, India, testing four independent variables — Infrastructure Quality, Energy Cost, Cold Storage Capacity and Infrastructure Gaps — against a composite Efficiency and Sustainability outcome. A quantitative, cross-sectional survey of 180 professionals working in cold storage facilities, logistics service providers and food processing units was analysed using reliability testing, descriptive statistics, normality diagnostics and multiple linear regression in IBM SPSS. All five constructs achieved goodto-excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha 0.863–0.918), and respondents rated every factor well above the neutral midpoint, with mean item scores clustered between 4.17 and 4.28 for infrastructure, energy and capacity items. The regression model, however, told a different story: the four predictors jointly explained only 0.4% of the variance in perceived efficiency and sustainability (R² =.004), and none of the individual beta coefficients reached statistical significance. This produces what the study terms a PerceptionReality Gap — practitioners are strongly convinced that infrastructure, energy cost, storage capacity and connectivity gaps drive cold chain performance, yet the variance in their own efficiency ratings is statistically untouched by differences in these same factors, suggesting that unmeasured managerial, technological and coordination variables are doing the real explanatory work. The study concludes that infrastructure investment remains necessary but is not, on this evidence, sufficient, and recommends that operators and policymakers pair physical upgrades with process-level interventions — digital temperature monitoring, workforce capability building and cross-stage coordination — to convert infrastructure spending into measurable efficiency gains.

Dinesh Kumar S, Ramkumar S,"Factors Influencing the Efficiency and Sustainability of Cold Chain Logistics Systems in the Food Industry in Coimbatore, India" International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Research and Educational Development, V2(4): Page(125-129) July - August 2026. ISSN: 3107-6513. www.ijamred.com. Published by Scientific and Academic Research Publishing.