Cold Link Africa May/June 2016 Vol 1 No 5 | Página 28

FEATURE
INCORPORATING COLD CHAIN

The cold stores of the past
When it comes to the actual cold store
itself, previously it was just a warehouse,
about the same height as any other
warehouse, which you packed up with as
much product as you could fit. “It didn’t
really matter which pallet you took out first,”
explains Cunningham. “It was came down
to what you could reach first.”
Cunningham remembers one instance
where the government imported beef
leg quarters from somewhere else in the
world, stacked it up 10m high and left
it there for two years. Getting the stuff
out was a nightmare. Eventually the guy
who was getting it out, went down to the
local yacht shop, bought an anchor and
chain, threw it onto the top and drove
out of the cold store at full speed, causing
an avalanche! That was the only way
he could attempt to get anything out or
separate it because it had all frozen in
place by that time.
“We used to jokingly use the acronym
FISH – ‘First In, Still Here’,” says Cunningham.
Apparently there was a cold store where
some product was still there 13 years later!
In the past, cases were packed in steel
converters, separating them and allowing
you to stack the cases high on a pallet. The
steel converters supported the cases. “You
often didn’t have a separate pallet as it
was built into the converter,” Cunningham
remembers. “Which meant you had to
unpack this converter to load into the
trucks – a hugely labour-intensive process.
That’s just the way it was done.”
Then everyone realised that this

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They’ve got to have immediate access to
every pallet.
Today, one of most important aspects of
a cold store is footprint. “To get the footprint
as low as possible we need to use lots of
design ‘tricks’,” explains Bailey. This may
involve the use of mobile racking, narrow
aisle racking, deep lane racking and
automated storage and retrieval systems.
“To reduce energy and construction costs,
the smaller the footprint the better.”
Cold store racking can predominantly
be divided into two categories according
to Cunningham: high-density racking and
individual access racking.
Individual access racking includes selective
fixed racking, crane racking, narrow aisle
racking, and mobile racking. With these
options you can get to any pallet at any
time.

The number of cold stores in the country is increasing rapidly.
wasn’t very efficient and wanted to
improve the process. That’s when drive-in
racking became more popular as things
were already on pallets. “But then the
accessibility problem hit and everyone
started looking at fixed racking. Then came
fixed selective racking, followed by narrowaisle racking. A couple of people even put
in crane racks. And then of course, finally,

a progression to the popular (and efficient)
mobile racking of today.”
The cold store of today
That was how it used to be. Now products
have ‘best before dates’ and stock
rotation. People have to get to their stock
quickly and have to ensure that they don’t
take stock that has a quality hold on it.

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High density racking includes push-back
racking, drive-in racking and flow racking.
With this type, you put a pallet in, and you
can’t get to each pallet individually. You
have to move other pallets first to get to the
ones in the back.
Mobile racking
“Mobile racking systems and solutions
are a fast growing area especially where
maximum space optimisation together
with the highest levels of operational
productivity and efficiencies are
demanded,” says Georgeson.
In reality now, with all the different codes
and types – drive-in racking is actually

COLD LINK AFRICA • May | June 2016