Freezer warehouse storage temperatures
in refrigerated warehouse buildings in St. Louis, Missouri historically have
been held that a -10°. Whenever a refrigerated food products or refrigerated ingredients
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 the Illinois portion to maintain 0° storage
temperatures in the freezer warehouse space. This trend began about 7 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 warehouses, 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 warehouse 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 freezer storage 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 of selling or leasing refrigerated buildings as a real estate broker. Please contact Jim Cronin at 314-994-0577 or e-mail J.Cronin@hawkds.com