Temperature Controlled Warehouses: Future of Warehousing

Temperature-controlled warehouses have a special design to store, prepare, and dispatch products that should remain at specified temperatures to maintain their quality. These facilities operate at four temperature ranges: ambient (59-86°F), cool (50-59°F), refrigerated (32-50°F), and frozen (-22-32°F).

Allied Market Research conducted a study on the global cold chain logistics market, which includes temperature-controlled warehousing. Their finding was that the global chain logistics market value was nearly $160 billion in 2018 and could reach $585.1 billion by 2026. These numbers show how much in demand temperature-controlled warehousing is and how its future looks. In addition, these facilities have storage space, handling equipment, and other elements such as cold storage racks, pallet conveyor systems, and cleanrooms. This helps maintain safety standards and preserves the quality of the stored products.

How Temperature-Controlled Warehouses Work?

These warehouses have specialised refrigeration equipment with several components: condensers, evaporators, compressors, and expansion valves. During the warehouse design, these components are placed strategically within the facility. They aid in controlling the different temperatures in and out of the cold store.

In turn, they create the conditions necessary for the time the products will be in store. Moreover, insulating sandwich panels must be included in the facilities during the designing process of these warehouses. This helps prevent the cold air from escaping to the outside, which could otherwise sabotage the stored products.

How Temperature-Controlled Warehouses Are Shaping The Future Of Warehousing?

Do you provide climate-sensitive products like medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and sophisticated instruments that require controlled temperature warehouse storage? Temperature-controlled warehouses transform the handling of specialised goods and the entire warehousing industry.

Energy Consumption and Optimised Storage Space

These warehouses use high-density storage systems, such as pallet rack systems, that help lower energy consumption. With optimised storage space, these solutions achieve efficient energy saving by reducing the square footage of refrigerated space needed. Additionally, they use airlock systems which help minimise the sudden temperature changes and thus prevent condensation. These airlock systems are usually located at the entry point of the freezer storage. The airlock system has an anteroom with two doors that shouldn’t be open simultaneously.

Adoption Of Modern Technology

Unlike before, when cold warehouse storage required lots of manual upkeep and record keeping, today, things have changed, and the future looks even better. The introduction of cutting-edge technologies has helped take temperature control in these warehouses to new standards. Logging, recording, and monitoring specific information about the parameters have become simple.

The use of data loggers helps monitor the humidity, temperature, and other conditions inside the storage unit. Moreover, cold storage racks have also helped maintain the specified temperature ranges for the stored goods. Some of these racks also come with built-in refrigeration units, which helps with additional cooling of the products stored on these racks.

Product-Focused

The aim of temperature control in temperature-controlled warehouses is to reduce the unpredictability in temperature that could cause damage to different products with different temperature needs. As it is, the hot air rises while cold air falls; sometimes, providing the exact needed temperature control at different heights can be hectic. This is so, especially with temperature fluctuations. Temperature-controlled storage systems aim at specific goods with specific temperature needs.

For instance, pharmaceuticals, flowers, and groceries can easily go bad when stored at inappropriate temperatures. Temperature-controlled warehouses have temperature control systems with insulated and sealed walls, roofs, and floors. This helps cut out debris, dust, and anything that could create an undesired environment. So, it’s crucial that all dealers of climate and temperature-sensitive goods partner with temperature-controlled warehouses.

People-Focused

Providing specified temperatures and the automation control technology that aids in running these facilities points to them as the best investment. This is because they not only provide the best resources but also care about their employees and, thus, their future. The automation system provides high-end efficiency.

Comfortable employees in a comfortable environment tend to outperform struggling employees. Employee strain can result from straining temperature issues, which can reduce efficiency. As the temperature-controlled warehousing trend rises, so does employee wellness and engagement.

The final touch that connects your product to the customers isn’t the sales team’s shareholders or board of directors; it’s the parkers and handlers. These are the people who ensure the product has the right packaging, the right preservation, and the right picking. Temperature-controlled warehousing is the answer the warehousing industry has been looking for in storing temperature and humidity-sensitive products.