Storage Temperature Control: A Seasonal Pain Point Comes to Market
According to a potatoway survey, 21 of 26 farms put their crop into storage, and temperature control has become a mass task this season. We break down three price segments of solutions: from an alcohol thermometer to specialized controllers.
Potatoes have gone into storage — and with them the main worry of the season: what is happening to the temperature inside the pile right now. According to a potatoway survey, 21 of 26 commercial farms put more than half of their harvest into storage, which means temperature control is no longer a concern for “advanced” growers only and is becoming a mass task. An evening discussion in an industry chat (October 11) showed that the market is already responding to this pain point — from an alcohol thermometer costing a hundred rubles to specialized controllers priced like a full project. We break down the three price segments and who each one suits.
Segment zero: manual control
“We trade until June on manual control and alcohol thermometers,” Anton Chebotnikov admitted frankly in the chat. This is not a failure but a working model for small farms: scheduled rounds, a thermometer on a pole in the pile, a logbook. The problem starts where the store is far away, there are many piles, and record purchase prices turn every missed week of overheating into a direct loss. Manual control does not scale — and that is exactly what pushed chat participants to look for solutions.
The “do it yourself” segment: marketplaces and industrial automation
The liveliest camp in the discussion was building a system on your own.
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Refrigeration processors from marketplaces. Gennady proposed the cheapest route: “Buy 10 identical refrigeration processors on Yandex.Market or Ozon… With these processors you can set up control of the flaps and cooling motors. In short, you can set up everything. You just have to think how.” The cost is hundreds of rubles per unit; the task comes down to careful wiring and setting thresholds. The risk: no technical support, no guarantee of stability, everything relies on enthusiasm.
OWEN TRM138. Andrey Starodubov recommended an industrial controller with 8 temperature and humidity channels and discrete outputs: a single device covers monitoring of the pile and can control actuators. Basic versions sell from about 13,000 ₽ (TRM138 without outputs), versions with extended outputs up to about 29,000 ₽ (distributor data for October 2026).
OWEN UKT38. Sergey Rusakov named an 8-channel meter with alarm signalling. Prices range from about 4,400 ₽ (basic Shch4.TS version) to about 23,700 ₽ (Shch4.TP).
The main bottleneck of the DIY approach is not the price of the device but communication. Vyacheslav Mansurov described a typical pain point: he could not buy simple electronic thermometers from storage equipment suppliers — “I just need to see the temperature” — while a store a hundred meters away “kills the accuracy of signal transmission.” In other words, budget automation solves the task locally, but remote monitoring (SMS, an app, dispatching) in this segment is either a separate engineering project or a compromise on reliability.
The “buy it ready-made” segment: specialized storage controllers
Sergey Tkachev (Agrovent) answered the DIY camp bluntly but to the point: “All these paths have already been walked, specialized controllers have appeared… they are expensive because the software has been refined for decades.” Specialized climate control systems for stores (from Dutch and other European vendors, as well as Russian integrators) cover the whole loop: temperature and humidity sensors, control of ventilation and flaps, monitoring of CO₂/O₂ concentration and, optionally, remote access for the agronomist. There are no public price lists in this segment: supplies are project-based, the benchmark is from hundreds of thousands of rubles per system for a store, and the payback according to vendors is about two seasons thanks to lower losses.
The honest conclusion: for a farm with 2–3 piles this is excessive; for a store of thousands of tonnes with regular batches it already makes economic sense.
Table. Three segments of temperature control
| Segment | Solutions | Price benchmark | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual control | Alcohol/electronic thermometers, rounds, logbook | Hundreds to a couple of thousand ₽ | Small farms, 1–2 piles, store nearby |
| DIY automation | Refrigeration processors (marketplaces); OWEN UKT38; OWEN TRM138 | From about 4,400 ₽ (UKT38) to about 29,000 ₽ (TRM138 with outputs); processors — hundreds of ₽ each | Mid-sized farms ready for self-installation; local control without remote access |
| Specialized controllers | Storage climate control systems (Agrovent and similar) | Project-based, from hundreds of thousands of ₽ per store | Large stores, commercial storage, selling until summer |
Prices are based on OWEN distributor and marketplace data for October 2026 and fluctuate; prices of specialized controllers are available on request from vendors.
Practical takeaway
Choosing a solution starts not with a price list but with three questions: how many piles are monitored, how far the store is from the farm, and whether access to data “from home” is needed. For most mid-sized commercial farms, the DIY segment looks like the entry point for the 2026/27 season: an industrial controller for 5,000–15,000 rubles covers monitoring of the pile and basic alarms, and the chat’s experience shows that building such a system yourself is quite realistic. Those for whom stored potatoes are a commodity until June sooner or later come to specialized controllers: as Tkachev noted, these paths have already been walked — the only question is whether you walk them with losses or without.
Sources
- Evening discussion in an industry chat on MAX, 11.10.2026, 17:40–19:22 (topic No. 1).
- potatoway survey: 21 of 26 farms put more than half of their harvest into storage.
- OWEN TRM138 — owen.ru/product/trm138v_new; distributor prices (October 2026): dis-rostov.ru, owenkomplekt.ru, sintera, industriation.
- OWEN UKT38 — distributor prices: termopara74.ru, kipspb.ru.
- Context on specialized storage controllers: AgroVent publications (LinkedIn; O₂/humidity/temperature control systems, payback of about 2 seasons), asiatechno.kz (ORION controllers, RAINBOW dispatching).
