What is a Cold Storage Warehouse?

As consumers, we always remain conscious of our dairy, meat, and other food products. Taking care of their storage and quality becomes our priority. Like us, the company that manufactures these products also takes precautions to keep such commodities safe. However, the difference is that a refrigerator is replaced by a cold storage warehouse when it comes to the manufacturing of such products.

It is difficult to compile the meaning of a cold storage warehouse in one single sentence as it has numerous definitions. In simple words, a cold storage warehouse is an area or building restricted to certain environmental conditions to keep the products safe. These warehouses usually look like any other warehouse from outside but differ in their inner environment.

Some cold storage warehouses have such extreme conditions that you need special equipment to stand inside. Unlike every other warehouse, cold storage warehouses also exist in different forms based on the need. As such, it is an important node of food supply chain logistics.

A cold storage warehouse undoubtedly differs from any other kind warehouses as per its name itself. Unlike other warehouses, a cold storage warehouse requires extra maintenance and surveillance in terms of temperature and heat exchange.

Products that can get damaged at normal room temperature conditions need a cold storage warehouse for their safe storage. To get a clear understanding of how it works, let’s have a look at the types of things it stores.

• Food products

Everything that you buy from the market and store in your refrigerator definitely would have come from a cold storage warehouse. Food such as dairy products, meat, vegetables, ice creams, etc. requires cold warehouse storage.

The end retail shops are located at a distant location from the manufacturing point. This makes it important to preserve the quality of the manufactured products. These products stay at multiple cold storage centers based on their distance from the final point of sale.

In some cases, the price of the product includes the cold storage warehouse cost. This is the reason why such products have somewhat higher prices than other products.

• Flowers and plants

Cold storage warehouses also have different sections for plants. Whenever you order a plant or a bouquet from an online store, the product in stored in a cold storage warehouse. The plants come from a farm, but in the case of distant delivery locations, they are kept at this kind of warehouse to prevent spoilage.

• Artworks

As the craze of art has been growing, so has the rate of art production. Nowadays, many of the sculptures or statues are made up of natural colors and fibers. This makes it necessary to reserve some space at a cold storage warehouse for artworks to be stored at the optiumum temperature, otherwise these artworks can be damaged.

• Pharmaceutical purposes

Cold storage warehouses play a vital role in saving the lives of people too. Many of the pharmaceutical products such as medicines and supplements require a specific temperature for storage. Some hospitals have term-based contracts with such warehouses to fulfill their needs.

Depending on the need, the temperature of a cold storage warehouse varies. This is because the optimum conditions of any two products are never the same. Vegetables may require a surrounding temperature of 12 degrees Celsius, whereas ice cream is preserved better at a temperature of -23.3 degrees Celsius.

To fulfill the demands of all kinds of products, cold storage warehouses have different sections kept at different environmental conditions. In the case of large supply or demand, many of the warehouses are dedicated to only one kind of environment to store the respective product.

In addition to keeping our products safe, cold storage warehouses have other benefits too.

• Prevents damaging of products

Keeping our products safe from any spoilage is a huge task. If cold storage warehouses did not exist, then manufacturing companies would have to bear a huge amount of loss as most manufacturing centers are not located near the end destination.

• Generates employment

Management of a cold storage warehouse requires skilled employees. All such warehouses have dedicated teams that manage stock, check the products and takes care of the environmental conditions. Hence, it is a great way of generating employment opportunities for many people.

• Increases efficiency

Imagine if every company had its own cold storage warehouse – such centers would consume a lot of space and money. Instead, the present kind of third-party cold storage warehouse costs less, saving time and money for manufacturers.

• Eases supply chain logistics

Logistics is the whole process of delivering manufactured goods to the end consumer. It consists of a lot of steps such as manufacturing, transportation, etc. Warehousing is a part of this chain and streamlines the whole process. The cold storage warehouse acts as a small substation by providing short-term storage of goods.

With the expansion of the logistics industry, the need for cold storage warehouses has increased. This has triggered the need for optimum management of cold storage warehouses. Here are some tips that are used by top-class warehouses. 

1. Since cold storage is all about temperature, it is important to monitor the temperature changes periodically.
2. People entering into any cold storage warehouse must have suitable equipment.
3. Use of the latest technology such as robotics, IoT, e-commerce enhances the performance of the cold storage warehouse.
4. Warehouses are big enough to cause confusion in numbers because tonnes of stock is exchanged daily. This makes it crucial to maintain the stock records carefully.