Refrigerated Warehouse -versus- Refrigerated Public Warehousing Services

Refrigerated Warehouse - versus - Refrigerated Warehousing.

There often is some confusion between the meaning of  what Refrigerated Warehousing and a Refrigerated Public Warehousing Services refers to. The two have come are sometimes synonymous. However, there is very distinct difference between refrigerated buildings and public refrigerated warehouse services. One describes a certain type of industrial real estate facility. The other describes a portion of a logistics activity.

A refrigerated warehouse is a term that is used in the industrial real estate industry. It is a warehouse or perhaps a distribution center that has all or a portion of its’ floor space capable of maintaining plus 40° Fahrenheit to minus 20°F storage temperatures. A refrigerated warehouse is a building where a company keeps its’ own inventory of refrigerated products in storage that will be shipped from that company’s building at some later date. The national average size of a refrigerated building is a total facility footprint of 35,000 ft.². There are refrigerated buildings as small as 10,000 ft.² and as large as 600,000 ft.²

Refrigerated warehousing is a distribution or logistics activity rather than real estate. Refrigerated warehousing is where a company will store for another company industrial product(s) that requires refrigerated or frozen storage. A refrigerated warehousing company is in the business of providing warehousing and storage services for food processors or food distributors that require warehousing services. These warehousing activities generally entail receiving of the product, storing the product for some period of time and then shipping the product back out of the warehouse. Sometimes the refrigerated warehousing company will provide added value services such as case picking or repackaging of the food products that require refrigeration.

The refrigerated warehousing company provides temporary solutions to that corporations that occupy their own refrigerated warehouse building. A refrigerated warehouse company is able to keep refrigerated product when a refrigerated building owner cannot hold any additional inventory at their own refrigerated building. Also there are situations where it makes sense for a food distributor or food processor to contract with or employ a refrigerated warehouse warehousing company rather than purchase or lease another refrigerated building and then staff it with its own personnel.

Hawk Distribution Services, LLC http://www.hawkds.com/ thoroughly understands the difference these often confused terms. Contact Jim Cronin, a real estate broker at 314-994-0577 or e-mail of j.cronin@hawkds.com  to confidentially discuss whether using public refrigerated warehousing or acquiring a the refrigerated facility is the best option for your company.

Refrigerated Warehouse Buildings convertible to freezer or cooler storage space.

Convertible Refrigerated Warehouse Buildings.

Refrigerated storage space within an industrial warehouse building is always defined by the limits of its’ temperature capabilities. All warehouse space in refrigerated buildings with temperature capabilities of a plus 65° Fahrenheit down to a minus 20° Fahrenheit is by definition defined as refrigerated warehouse space.

However a question often asked in refrigerated real estate brokerage of freezer warehouse or cooler warehouse space is an understanding of what the temperature range capacity is of the refrigerated warehouse storage space that is temperature controlled. Different refrigerated food products have different temperature storage specification requirements. Most companies offer many different refrigerated food products and therefore have multiple refrigerated storage temperature needs inside of one refrigerated warehouse building.

When understanding whether or not a freezer or cooler warehouse building is capable of maintaining a certain temperature, 3 aspects of the construction of freezer or cooler warehouse building that have to be considered. Those aspects are the warehouse floor, the installation within the walls and the ceiling and the type of refrigeration system.

The refrigerated warehouse floor will either contain an in-floor heating/defrosting system or it does not have defrosting capabilities .If the building was designed exclusively for freezer warehouse storage, it will have an heating system underneath the warehouse floor. These heating/defrosting systems are of various types, but it is designed to not let the moisture in the ground below the refrigerated warehouse floor to freeze. Whatever water freezes, it expands and that expansion of water below the refrigerated warehouse floor will cause the floor to heave upwards and possibly even result in making a structurally unstable warehouse building.
If the building was initially designed for any refrigerated food processing operations, underneath the food processing building’s production floor areas there will be floor drains. Also, there will be various water pipes for processing and cleanup of foods manufacturing operations. The floor drains will conduct the cold to where the pipes may run causing freezing problems anywhere in the building. Occasionally the property surrounding that building will eventually freeze all the way to the sanitary sewer system. Then of course all water pipes within the production floor area freeze when it gets colder than 32° Fahrenheit. This type of building can never be used for the storage of product requiring freezer warehouse storage temperatures. To do so cause damage to the facility due to the expansion caused by unprotected freezing. The refrigeration systems were designed for temperatures higher than 32° Fahrenheit, so to operate those below that, would cause the refrigeration system to eventually freeze up with ice. Also ice would form under the floor and the floors would heave at some point time.

Some industrial warehouse facilities are designed to provide storage temperatures only for a plus 40°F to a plus 65°F. The installation thickness and efficiencies for the insulated walls and ceiling required to operate at these refrigerated temperatures are less efficient than those required to operate at freezer storage temperatures less than 32°.

The refrigeration systems that are designed to operate in above freezing conditions have no defrosting mechanisms. Therefore if a cooler building was brought to below freezing temperatures, eventually the warehouse floors would buckle and heave, the refrigeration systems which freeze up with ice and until both of those happened, the energy consumption would be abnormally high.

However if you purchase or lease in industrial warehouse facility with freezer warehouse space, you can always store product in that building that requires less than 32° storage temperatures. If you wish to have temperatures between 40° and 65°F then all that will be needed is to change the refrigeration system to a different type of gas and pressures within that system and other various minor modifications to the evaporators. The floors will not heave upwards because there are is no underground moisture freezing going on to cause expansion. The wall and ceiling insulation will also be more than efficient. This is what is referred to as Convertible Warehouse Space.

As the saying goes in the refrigerated building real estate brokerage industry, "You can always make a freezer building a cooler building, but you can never make a cooler building a freezer building".

Hawk Distribution Services provides real estate brokerage services for refrigerated buildings. Information about refrigerated buildings available for sale or lease is available at http://www.hawkds.com/ or contact Jim Cronin at 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com