Freezer storage temperature in refrigerated buildings in St. Louis, Missouri.

        

Freezer storage temperatures in refrigerated buildings in St. Louis, Missouri historically have been held at a -10°. Whenever a refrigerated food product or refrigerated ingredient for food products were kept in the freezer warehouse portion of the refrigerated building it was believed that a -10° storage temperature was required to maintain the quality and desirability of the refrigerated food. However there has been a trend in the Metropolitan St. Louis area and also refrigerated buildings in Illinois portion to maintain 0° storage temperatures in the freezer space. This trend began about 5 years ago, about the time of the beginning of the most recent economic downturn. What appears to be is that the owner’s and the operator’s of some of the refrigerated food companies, refrigerated cold storage, and refrigerated food processing companies reviewed all of their operations operating costs in order to maintain profit margins. Electrical usage is a significant operating cost of any refrigerated building. Perhaps over time the freezer storage temperatures were allowed to increase to what has become normally a 0° zero degrees storage temperature within the freezer portion of the refrigerated building.

Certain refrigerated food products require lower freezer storage temperatures. Food products with high sugar content require lower freezer storage temperatures, because the freezing temperature of sugar is lower than 32°, much like salt water requires lower than 32° to freeze solid. Ice cream products therefore require freezer storage temperatures normally at -15°. Also frozen dough bakery products sometimes have certain types of yeast that have exact freezer storage temperature specifications. The temperature specifications have some relation to activating the yeast, with certain types of yeast having different temperature specifications for freezer warehouse storage.

Hawk Distribution Services, LLC www.hawkds.com has 28 years of experience as refrigerated building real estate brokers. Please contact Jim Cronin at 314-994-0577 or e-mail J.Cronin@hawkds.com to discuss your company's refrigerated building real estate needs.