How Therma is using IoT in the fight against climate change
San Francisco, California-based Therma is an IoT equipment platform focused on supporting the cold chain with temperature monitoring and analytics.
The company uses IoT with the aim to eliminate key contributors to climate change - namely food waste, energy inefficiency and emissions of refrigerants, which are themselves a greenhouse gas, in the global cold chain.
Its wireless sensors measure temperature and humidity, preventing manual checks and sending real-time notifications via 4G, with customers including 7-Eleven and McDonald’s. Therma said that annually, its solutions in each installed location prevent the equivalent of 1.07 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
Scaling up activities
Founded in 2019, the company yesterday announced a $10.2mn funding round led by Deciens Capital, alongside G-Bar Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Rite Hite, Govtech Fund, and Active Impact Investments.
Therma said it would use the funds to scale up its activities. "This represents a major step forward in the evolution of the 150-year-old cold-chain," said Manik Suri, Founder and CEO of Therma. "Food and beverage, healthcare, hospitality and manufacturing are all critically dependent on the refrigeration cold chain. Over the last year, we have seen a significant increase in demand across these industries for real-time equipment monitoring and analytics that not only reduce costs and improve safety, but also positively impacts climate change."
The vaccine cold chain
The cold chain itself has come under renewed focus due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the vaccines that have been developed must be kept at the right temperatures during transport so that they don’t degrade. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, for instance, needs to be stored at -70C.
At the end of last year, IBM detailed cybersecurity threats to the vaccine cold chain in the for of a global phishing campaign that began in September 2020 and spanned six countries.
(Image: Therma)