California refrigerated food processors relocate to the Midwest.

California refrigerated food processors relocate operations to Midwest.

California refrigerated food processing companies now are searching for refrigerated buildings to for sale or to refrigerated buildings to lease an existing refrigerated food processing plant within the Midwest. A number of motivating factors have developed as a result of the current economic climate that have caused refrigerated building real estate searches for existing refrigerated food processing facilities or refrigerated buildings that are for sale or for lease or sublease.

The primary reason that California and other West Coast based food processing companies began searching to purchase or lease refrigerated food processing building locations in the Midwest is that the cost of transportation of their finished products to the massive consumer markets along the Atlantic seaboard, and in particular the Northeast. The price of diesel fuel has never gone down. However as consumer demand and income has remained constant over the last four or five years there has been a reluctance to accept price increases and in particular food prices increases. Food processing companies continue to reduce their manufacturing costs to avoid price increases of their refrigerated products. Some refrigerated food processors are now looking to relocate their refrigerated buildings to further reduce their cost of food manufacturing.

A Midwest refrigerated food processing plant would make significant reductions in their transportation costs associated with the delivery of food products to the Northeast, as compared to transportation costs from California to the Northeast.

The Midwest provides a better logistical platform to acquire commodities used in refrigerated food processing operations. Further the purchase price or lease rental rates of a refrigerated building in the Midwest are significantly less when compared to California are other West Coast locations.

Hawk Distribution Services LLC ( http://www.hawkds.com/ ) provides refrigerated building real estate brokerage services in the Midwest. The St. Louis, Missouri and Kansas City, Missouri real estate brokerage offices offer only refrigerated food processing buildings or freezer and cooler warehouse buildings for sale or lease. To learn more about refrigerated food processing or warehouse buildings available in Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Illinois contact Jim Cronin at 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com



Techniques in pricing of rental rates when leasing refrigerated warehouse space.

What does refrigerated warehouse space lease for?
What do refrigerated buildings rent for?
What should I lease this refrigerated warehouse space for? Sometimes this is a very difficult question to answer!

When leasing a refrigerated warehouse building or refrigerated food processing plant it is confusing what a fair lease rate price would be to pay in rent for a refrigerated building or refrigerated warehouse space. What are the terms and conditions that matter most when your company decides to rent refrigerated warehouse space? Leasing of refrigerated warehouse space can be both confusing and frustrating; any mistake might be a very costly mistake.

Understanding what the tenant should pay for and what the building owner should pay for after moving into the building should always is part of any of lease negotiations of refrigerated warehouse space. Questions about who will pay for the electric bill, payment of the property taxes and maintenance to the refrigerated building structure all need to be answered. Then who will operate the refrigeration mechanical system? What happens when there are major repairs needed to that Freon or Ammonia refrigeration system, who will fix the refrigeration system, and then who will pay for those repairs? Is it the refrigerated landlord or is it the refrigerated tenant's responsibility for all environmental accountability and reporting for the refrigeration system’s gas? What if your company's refrigerated food product is damaged by a loss of temperature in the refrigerated warehouse space that you have leased? Who will pay for the loss? Is it the tenant’s responsibility or the building owner’s responsibility or is it an issue for the insurance company, but whose insurance company?

The proper understanding of leasing of refrigerated warehouse space is very important. Hawk Distribution Services,LLC of St. Louis, Missouri has 26 years of refrigerated real estate brokerage experience. Hawk is available to assist your company in the leasing of refrigerated warehouse space.http://www.hawkds.com/

Contact Jim Cronin at 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com for professional  refrigerated real estate brokerage advice on leasing of refrigerated warehouse space in St. Louis, Missouri or the leasing of refrigerated warehouse space a in Kansas City, Missouri or leasing refrigerated warehouse space in the Midwest. Also Broker Price Opinions are available to establish what the market lease rate is for a refrigerated warehouse building or refrigerated food processing plant in St. Louis or Kansas City or in your area. Go to www.hawkds.com

Refrigerated Buildings- What are the sell prices and lease rates going for?

         Broker Price Opinion
What is my refrigerated warehouse building worth?

What a refrigerated building might sell for is often hard to determine. These unique buildings have a wide range of uses, temperature capabilities and percentages of refrigerated warehouse space to total building size that makes understanding how your refrigerated building compares to other refrigerated buildings that have been sold for recently.

It is often confusing trying to understand what other freezer or cooler building to consider, or not to consider, when trying to establish how much money your building would sell for. How long would it take to be sold in today's real estate market?

A Broker Price Opinion is the quickest way to obtain an independent analysis of your buildings value. The Broker Price Opinion, or BPO, is a written statement from a licensed real estate broker that in their opinion what the building would sell for. The Broker Price Opinion letter is faster and more affordable than a formal real estate appraisal would be for your refrigerated building.

Broker Price Opinions can be used for matters concerning property tax appeals, certain bank refinancing, tax or accounting purposes and for eminent domain proceedings.

The fundamental reason that a broker’s opinion is reliable is that a real estate broker’s primary source of income is from a completed real estate transaction. Who would better know what your refrigerated building’s sale price would be than someone whose profession is selling refrigerated buildings?

Want to know what your refrigerated warehouse facility or refrigerated food processing plant would sell for? Hawk Distribution Services, LLC has 25 years of refrigerated building real estate brokerage services.
Contact Jim Cronin at 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com


Samples of refrigerated warehouse buildings for sale or refrigerated warehouse buildings for lease in St. Louis, Missouri and refrigerated warehouse buildings in Metro East Illinois portion of the St. Louis metropolitan area for sale or for lease, and refrigerated warehouse buildings in Indiana and refrigerated warehouse buildings for sale or refrigerated warehouse building lease in Kansas City, Missouri go www.hawkds.com

Alternative Uses For An Refrigerated Foodservice Distribution Buildings.

An alternative use for an institutional foodservice distribution building with freezer space and cooler space refrigerated warehouse space.

The foodservice refrigerated distribution facility is one of the more recent styles of facility types in refrigerated (cold storage) building real estate. Refrigerated food processing facilities began to appear about 100 years ago. However, a refrigerated warehouse building in its most basic form can date back as far as the 1860s if you consider the use of ice as the refrigerant type. The foodservice distribution facility did not began to be widely constructed until about the mid- 1960s. In the 1970s, construction of new foodservice distribution buildings began to rapidly accelerate as the institutional foodservice industry also began rapidly expanding to accommodate the American public's food consumption habits of dining away from home, either fast food or dining out.

The 1970s institutional foodservice distribution building’s floor plan included approximately 8% refrigerated warehouse space being either freezer or cooler storage temperature capable. Today, the new construction footprint of an institutional foodservice distribution building may have as much as 50% of its floor plan being refrigerated warehouse space including both freezer warehouse and cooler warehouse temperature storage capabilities. The dramatic increase in the amount of the refrigerated warehouse portion of an institutional foodservice building demonstrates the continually increasing demand for refrigerated and frozen food products needed for the retail, wholesale and fast food restaurant industries.

When an institutional foodservice distribution building becomes available for either of these for sale, typically there were 2 types of potential prospects for this multiple temperature refrigerated warehouse building. The first type of purchase prospect is a landlord that would buy the refrigerated. Then the new owner would enter into a lease for freezer and cooler warehouse space with one tenant. Then the landlord would locate another tenant for the dry warehouse space. Occasionally, the office space is leased out to a third tenant, but most the time it remains vacant. The second type of purchaser of an institutional foodservice distribution building is a Public Refrigerated Warehousing Company or otherwise known as a PRW.

Many of these refrigerated buildings have a floor plan that totals 150,000 square feet to 250,000 square feet. This large amount of total square footage is necessary for the Public Refrigerated Warehousing Company to optimize revenues and their associated expenses. This is the industry average for the most efficient size of a building to operated as a public refrigerated warehousing company. The 3 different warehouse storage temperatures of frozen warehouse, refrigerated warehouse and ambient warehouse provided the flexibility needed by the warehouse clients utilizing public refrigerated warehousing services.

A typical institutional foodservice distribution building is a facility available for lease through Hawk Distribution Services of St. Louis, Missouri http://www.hawkds.com/ is located at 7095 Vicksburg Pike, Ft. Wayne, Indiana 46804. This institutional foodservice distribution building was bought for and currently used by a public refrigerated warehousing company. The building is a total of 145,000 ft.² and situated on 10 acres of land. The building has 55,000 ft.² of refrigerated warehouse space offering both frozen in refrigerated storage temperature for food products. There is another 55,000 ft.² of dry or ambient warehouse space in the building that is utilized for public warehousing operations. The warehousing services available include dry, cooler and freezer storage, as well as refrigerated warehouse space leasing of portions of the freezer warehouse space or cooler warehouse space.

Online tour of this facility is available at http://property.loopnet.com/14986479 or for further information contact Jim Cronin of Hawk Distribution Services. Hawk Distribution Services specializes in refrigerated building real estate brokerage services in the Midwest. Jim Cronin can be reached at 314-994-0577 or his e-mail is j.cronin@hawkds.com

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

Humidity and Refrigerated Warehouse Storage Space.

Refrigerated building real estate primarily involves refrigerated food processing buildings or freezer warehouse buildings or cooler warehouse buildings that are either for sale or for lease or sublease. However, there are occasionally industrial refrigerated distribution facilities that become available that have cooler warehouse space and warehouse space providing 65° storage temperatures that are also are equipped with humidity control. Cooler warehouse space is maintained at 32° to 45° never does need any type of special mechanical apparatus to control humidity within the cooler storage areas. The cooling process allows for acceptable humidity levels for the storage of food products. Refrigerated warehouse space that is maintained at 65° will usually require some sort of special mechanical apparatus for manipulation of the humidity within those 65° warehouse storage areas. The refrigeration mechanicals and the cooling mechanisms to take heat out of the air for the cooler warehouse space automatically remove much of the humidity. The refrigeration mechanicals needed to keep warehouse storage space at 65° are not designed to effectively ensure the consistent regulation of the humidity for the warehouse storage of food products and food ingredients. To maintain proper humidity levels in this type of warehouse space requires special mechanical systems to add or remove moisture from the air.

Many food products require only warehouse storage temperatures are not greater than 65°. The reason for this is that many food products, such as candy and other such confectioneries, require their refrigerated warehouse space being maintained at 65°, because warehouse temperatures warmer than that would affect the candy product’s appearance, quality and shelf life. If the candy was stored in a non-refrigerated industrial warehouse space (also known as dry warehouse space) during the summer months, the temperatures in the non-refrigerated industrial warehouse (dry) space might reach 80° or 90° Fahrenheit or higher. In most parts of the United States, air temperatures over 80° is most often associated with elevated humidity levels.

Humidity control is also necessary for candy warehouse storage, because chocolate and other confectionary products easily lose the moisture that was added in the food production process. Many candies and confectioneries can be stored at cooler warehouse storage temperatures or can be frozen. Many candy manufacturers place their product into public refrigerated warehouse companies requesting freezer storage services. This is so that they can build an inventory for the holiday seasons. Placing any food product into freezer warehouse storage stops the shelf life of the food product.

Manufacturers of candy and other confectionary companies typically lease refrigerated industrial warehouse space on a seasonal basis. The reason that many candy manufacturers lease industrial refrigerated warehouse space with cooler warehouse or freezer warehouse storage temperature capabilities is that candy is consumed in the United States during certain peak consumption times such as Halloween, the Easter holiday, and the mid November to late December time period of religious and national holidays.

Jim Cronin of Hawk Distribution Services, LLC http://www.hawkds.com/ has a refrigerated warehouse space for lease listed for lease at 467 Bussen Underground Road, St. Louis County, Missouri 63129. This refrigerated warehouse property has cooler warehouse space and humidity controlled temperature warehouse space which operates naturally at 65° Fahrenheit. An online property tour of this refrigerated warehouse space is available by linking to website address of http://property.loopnet.com/17063421 Jim Cronin can be contacted at 314-994-0577 or j.cronin@hawkds.com