Guide to Cold Storage Warehouse Equipment to Maximize Efficiency
Maximizing efficiency is crucial for staying relevant in today’s economy. A key part of that efficiency is having the best equipment for cold product storage and organization on hand. When used correctly, the devices workers use to move goods can improve the management of a cold storage warehouse, allowing for faster responses to orders and more organized inventory.
Jump To Sections:
- Cold Storage Equipment Layout
- Challenges Facing Cold Storage Warehouse Industry
- Equipment for Shipping Cold Products
- Equipment for Receiving Cold Products
- Cold Storage Management Best Practices
- Changes in the Industry
- Why Cherry’s Industrial Equipment?
Cold Storage Equipment Layout
With a well-managed warehouse, any facility can rise to meet the challenges currently facing the cold storage industry. The following layout is what we recommend to maximize the operation and storage capabilities of your cold food product warehouse:
Challenges Facing Cold Storage Warehouse Industry
The cold storage warehouse industry serves as a vital part of the food supply chain. But, like any other sector, the cold storage warehouse industry faces several challenges in today’s market — these include:
1. The Need for More Space
One of the biggest challenges currently facing the cold storage warehouse industry is also its greatest benefit. The sector is growing at exponential rates. Industry insiders estimate that cold storage space in the United States will need to increase by up to 100 million square feet from 2019 through 2024.
Unfortunately, new cold storage space construction fails to keep pace. In the fourth quarter of 2019, builders only added 4.5 million square feet of cold storage warehouse space. Consequently, warehouses must work more efficiently with the space they have as demands for their services increase.
Existing dry warehouses do not convert well into cold storage spaces because the standard heights differ significantly. Dry warehouses typically have ceilings of only 34 to 36 feet, but cold storage facilities usually reach 40 to 60 feet tall. These differences mean that businesses must either rely on new construction or find ways of making the existing storage space more efficient.
2. Increased Pressure to Automate
Part of increasing efficiency is finding labor-saving equipment for warehouses. Up to 70% of operating costs go to labor in this industry. Training and retaining employees, though, is difficult due to the harsh working environment and cold temperatures.
Automation and other labor-saving elements can help facilities to make better use of the space and labor they have available. While many equate these solutions with robotics, not all automated equipment falls into this category. Some simply reduce the time that humans must work on a given task. For instance, a powered SR2 freezer spacer removal and insertion device can reduce human labor by up to 95% compared to manual operation. Equipment such as this reduces the effort human workers need to put into individual tasks, making them more efficient while working in cold storage facilities.
3. Changes in Construction
While the need for cold storage remains high, challenges in how new warehouses go up exist. For instance, the industry will need an increasing number of cold storage warehouses built without tenants signed up. These new constructions will increase the need for real estate space, but many third-party warehouses only use short-term contracts, making it increasingly difficult for companies to lease a building before they can move in. Rising costs in major cities may cause cold storage facilities to choose new construction locations in smaller markets with lower land costs.
Equipment for Shipping Cold Products
The best equipment to use for cold storage management include tools that help workers to quickly prepare products for shipping. Getting goods out of a warehouse quickly and accurately may improve profits by decreasing turnaround times for orders.
1. Inline Pallet and Spacer Retrievers (PSRs)
Inline pallet and spacer retrievers (inline PSRs) allow you to quickly transport cold products out of your facility by making the removal of spacers and pallets simple. Several options, from gravity-fed to automated devices, vary the level of labor you have available to work on preparing loads for shipping. More automation increases worker productivity. Moving loads down conveyors also reduces the number of times that workers have physical contact with the products.
Decreasing the number of touchpoints reduces the chances of workers picking up germs from surfaces or spreading germs through contact with the packaging. Cleaner warehouses often use more automation to make the number of times a worker touches surfaces that others contact as low as possible.
For easing your new inline PSR into your existing equipment line, these devices integrate into your system for preparing products for shipping in one of four ways:
- Direct-fed: The direct-fed inline PSR requires workers to feed pallets into it with a forklift. The pallets leave via a conveyor belt to travel to stretch wrappers. As a semi-automatic option, this PSR automates tilting, clamping and conveying while removing the spacers and pallets remains manual.
- Conveyor loaded: Conveyor loaded inline PSRs bring the pallets to the equipment via a conveyor in the freezer. A forklift loads the conveyor, freeing up space on the loading dock. Finished pallets travel automatically to a stretch wrapper. These devices can cut worker handling of the pallets by 50%.
- Gravity-fed: Gravity-fed options have a simple, yet efficient design. Workers remove the pallets after taking out spacers using a forklift.
- Customized option: At Cherry’s Industrial Equipment, we handle both standard and customized requests for inline PSRs. Tell us about your warehouse’s needs, and we can design equipment to work with your facility.
2. Stretch Wrappers
After removing the spacers and pallets, many of the inline PSRs send the products directly to a stretch wrapper. These wrappers cover each load with layers of tight plastic wrap to hold all the products tightly in a bundle. Tighter loads reduce the chances of the bundles coming apart and products becoming damaged in transit. Poorly wrapped loads that fall apart could cost a warehouse valuable repeat business. Stretch wrappers can prevent such losses.
Stretch wrapping devices use less film and save time over using people to wrap loads. In fact, some stretch wrappers can pre-stretch the film 200%, a significant increase from the 10% achievable by a person wrapping a load. These come in many forms based on their design and operation, including:
- Automatic/robotic stretch wrappers: Automating the wrapping process increases worker productivity by 20% and uses up to 55% less film than other wrappers.
- Overhead models: When wrapping pallets directly on the floor, an overhead model may better suit the task. These units have a mast that wraps around the pallet, keeping the load still. Stacks that would fall if rotated on a turntable wrapper may need an overhead wrapper to keep the goods in place.
- Turntable stretch wrappers: Turntable stretch wrappers require a worker to place the load onto a turntable. The table rotates the stack for wrapping. Combining this design with a conveyor belt can allow for up to 360 loads wrapped daily.
3. Pallet Tunnels
Pallet tunnels, also known as pallet straighteners, hold stacked pallets securely and away from the walls or corners. While some companies may use walls as an edge to hold stacks of pallets straight, this practice is dangerous. Forklifts could strike a wall or corner, causing severe damage to the lift or the walls. By stacking pallets in a tunnel, forklifts stay away from vertical surfaces that they could hit, causing severe accidents.
Additionally, stacked pallets in a tunnel have support around them. This support system ensures the piles do not tip over. By using these tunnels, you can prevent injuries from pallets falling from a stacked pile.
Lastly, these tunnels save time and effort. They can hold up to 20 pallets and align them straighter than a worker stacking pallets by hand could.
The types of pallet tunnels include those that integrate into conveyor lines and those that require manual operation with forklifts. Those built into conveyor systems include options that automatically feed the straightened pallets to a pallet retriever system. This action reduces the number of driving forklifts must do while cutting down on the labor needed for moving pallets to different parts of the warehouse. Whether automatic or manual, pallet tunnels make a facility safer and more efficient.
Equipment for Receiving Cold Products
The intake of products must happen smoothly. Snags anywhere in the process can cost valuable seconds, wasting time and productivity. Additionally, in cold storage facilities, the chilly temperatures can tire workers over their shifts. Reducing their efforts through labor-saving devices can prevent costly mistakes.
When it comes to how to properly store cold products in a warehouse, maintaining the temperature of the goods and ensuring the cleanliness of surfaces are paramount. However, you have many options for doing these two tasks, including a variety of freezer spacers and washing equipment to suit your operation’s needs.
1. Freezer Spacers
A unique need of the cold and frozen food storage industry is keeping food products from changing temperatures too much. Even in storage, adequate chilled airflow must pass between pallets and products to ensure quality. Freezer spacers offer a solution to this by providing support and letting cold air move freely.
The materials used for these spacers make a difference. You have the choice between plastic and aluminum, which each offers individual benefits.
Plastic spacers are an ideal solution for perishable goods because you can quickly clean and sanitize them between uses. These spacers have different designs to use in a variety of situations. These designs include lightweight egg crate forms, models injected with thermoplastic for added stability, open design for blast freezing applications and MAXI-design.
2. Freezer Spacer Insertion Robotics
A labor-intensive task in any cold storage warehouse is placing freezer spacers between load components. Unstacking, inserting spacers and restacking the loads by hand requires large amounts of labor. By automating the process with a spacer insertion robotics system, like the SR2-8, your facility can insert freezer spacers in up to 30 pallet loads an hour. If you want to make your labor force more efficient, automating certain tasks, like spacer insertion, is a simple way to ease your employee’s efforts.
3. Freezer Spacer Insertion or Rerack
For organizing materials in a warehouse, using lift tables can improve your workplace ergonomics. Rather than requiring workers to put spacers or pallets between loads from the ground, a lift table brings the load to a comfortable level.
For warehouses that store food or drinks, stainless steel lift tables offer a method of moving loads to safe, comfortable working heights. Additionally, these lift tables have surfaces and components that workers can easily sanitize. Maintaining clean surfaces and sanitary conditions in any food handling warehouse is critical, but the task becomes even more important in facilities that handle fresh meats or other foods that can cause contamination of other products. Using devices that your workers can put through washing equipment for the meat manufacturing industry keeps the facility up to government standards for cleanliness while preserving food safety of the products in storage.
4. Washing Stations
When choosing frozen foods and cold storage equipment, the products used must adhere to the strict requirements from the government for cleanliness. The capability to frequently clean products such as pallets should guide your choices for pallets and washing equipment for any food storage industry.
The use of a washing station for pallets, freezer spacers and other equipment is an essential part of keeping cold storage products clean. You may need multiple options for washing surfaces and equipment, but we have these options and more. Commonly used washing equipment for the frozen food industry includes the following:
- Tray and spacer washers: You need to use freezer spacers in frozen food storage facilities. To protect food safety, you need a washing station that will thoroughly clean these spacers without damaging them. In addition to spacers, these washers can also handle bread trays, meat lugs and other flat equipment.
- Pallet washers: You may not need freezer spacers in a refrigerated food storage facility, but if you use pallets, you will still need to sanitize the equipment before reusing it. Pallet washers can clean pallets, spacers, totes and other containers.
- Pallet dryers: Wet pallets may cause products to fall off or could breed mold or harbor bacteria. The pallet dryers we have include models that offer adjustable temperature and air controls, letting you make adjustments for saving energy or for speeding drying.
- Pressure washers: Pressurized hot or cold water blasts away dirt from equipment and surfaces in a cold storage warehouse. Having several pressure washers on-hand lets multiple workers take over cleaning at once, reducing the time needed to keep the facility clean.
Cold Storage Management Best Practices
The best practices for managing cold storage warehouses include different tactics than those in charge of standard warehouses. Temperature control and food safety are among the most important things to maintain in a facility. By focusing on these in addition to improving productivity, warehouse managers can better manage their facilities by making choices that optimize these crucial aspects of operations.
1. Find Customized Solutions for Your Storage Needs
Properly managing a cold storage facility does not require a cookie-cutter solution. To make finding a solution for your operation simpler, we at Cherry’s Industrial Equipment offer a variety of solutions customized to the specific needs of various cold storage industries.
For example, for places that store meat, seafood and poultry, we offer washing machinery to clean pallets and prevent cross-contamination. Our products for the storage of dairy and cheese help facilities protect the safety and health of their workers while keeping the facility and equipment clean. For the beverage industry, among our many products, we provide long-lasting pallets that are better for the environment and easier to clean than wood.
2. Make Alternative Plans
Have contingency plans on file in case of an emergency. Does your facility have backup power generators in case of a blackout? Do you have a plan if workers are cut off from reaching the facility by road closures or natural disasters? What will you do if a large portion of your workforce must stay home due to a natural disaster or widespread illness?
Openly communicating these plans with your workers ensures that everyone knows what you expect of them in emergencies. Having methods to continue working with a reduced workforce in emergencies can also prevent product loss and keep products moving through the supply chain.
3. Optimize Space Use
Cold storage warehouse space is a premium due to its extra requirements and high demand. You must make the most of your available space to meet the higher demands. You may need to create flexible temperature areas that cater to frozen and refrigerated foods. Modular curtain walls allow you to create new storage places by subdividing the space you already have.
The new spaces can operate at warmer or colder temperatures, based on the needs of your facility. For example, you can take a large refrigerated warehouse and separate parts of it for frozen food storage with curtain walls. Because storage requirements may change throughout the year, by using modular walls, you can readily move them to increase or decrease storage spaces as needed.
Changes in the Industry
All industries experience changes over time, and the cold storage industry is no exception. Changes in the industry have made warehouse managers shift their focus onto doing more with fewer workers, protecting the workers they have from injuries and illness and increasing the levels of cleanliness in their facilities.
These changes stem from other changes. One such alternation is an increased demand for e-commerce and home deliveries of groceries, a trend predicted at the very beginning of 2020. With 95% of food delivered through online orders moving through some type of cold storage warehouse, the need for more cold storage space will continue to increase as people gain confidence in ordering groceries and other food through online retailers.
Another change is a greater focus on protecting workers and keeping them safe and healthy. Automating processes in cold storage warehouses is no longer a futuristic idea but a common practice in many places. Automated and semiautomated equipment let facilities do more with lower workforces while preventing injuries in the employees they have.
Cleanliness has always been important for the food industry and the cold storage sector, but now, cleanliness connects to both product safety and worker security. Keeping facilities clean prevents contamination of products and helps workers avoid spreading germs to each other during their shifts. During cold and flu season, preventing infections from spreading can ensure as full a workforce as possible while preventing germs from getting on food products in the facility.
These industry changes don’t alter the main goals of the food storage industry of keeping products safe and moving them quickly. However, the methods needed now to maintain productivity and product quality have a slightly different focus. Industries rarely stay the same for long, but regardless of changes in the industry, Cherry’s Industrial Equipment will be here to offer quality products and guidance for maintaining healthy, safe and productive cold storage warehouses.
Why Cherry’s Industrial Equipment?
Since 1983, Cherry’s Industrial Equipment has offered material handling and cold storage warehouse equipment that improves ergonomics, increases productivity and helps maintain a clean and sanitary environment. Even throughout changes in the cold storage industry, Cherry’s Industrial remains present to provide the support equipment facilities need to maintain clean, efficient workplaces.
Whether you need automation equipment, want more washing stations for your warehouse or need help with finding the right solution for your cold storage facility, contact us at Cherry’s Industrial Equipment for assistance and information.