Cold Storage Capacity: How Much Space Do You Really Need?
In modern life, refrigeration is important for the industries associated with perishable goods to ensure the longevity of the products. As a result, it is key to invest in the good storage methods that come with the proper cold storage capacity for your convenience. In general, cold rooms are built in standard sizes such as 10 ft x 10 ft x 8 ft or 3 m x 3 m x 2.5 m. However, many of you might be wondering how much space you specifically need.
This blog explores the key aspects of cold storage capacity. By the end, you would also come across the process involved to determine the perfect cold storage that meets your needs and long-term growth along with its types. With this in mind, let's get started!
What is Cold Storage Capacity?
Before we go into the details regarding the space needed to install for your business and home use, let's talk about cold storage in brief. So, what is the cold storage capacity? The simple answer to this is cold storage capacity is the measure of the total space available for storing purpose in the cold storage.
A cold storage facility that is poorly sized results in inefficiency and increased operational costs or even loss of quality of the products. Thus, it is a good idea not to neglect the cold storage capacity for operational workflow and future planning for scalability.
How to Determine the Right Cold Storage Capacity for Your Needs?
So far, we have only discussed the idea of cold storage capacity; now, let's shift our focus to ways to find the ideal cold storage capacity. This, however, is by no means an easy task as it requires identification of nature, the volume of the goods to be stored, and calculation for space requirements. Regardless, we have prepared guidelines to make your life easier.
1. Type and Quantity of Products
One of the major factors that determine the layout and size of your refrigerated warehouse is the nature and quantity of goods to store. Different products require different environmental conditions, including temperature and humidity, to preserve their freshness and integrity. For the storage of a wide array of products, temperature necessity is an important factor.
The frozen food products, ranging from ice cream to meat and seafood, should be kept at extremely low temperatures, such as below -18°C and up to -25°C. Here, the cold storage panels are bulkier with increased insulation thickness, meaning you need to manage more cold storage capacity. For the look of pharmaceuticals and vaccines, they are maintained between 2°C to 8°C. Their space requirement is particularly lesser as compared to frozen food products. Therefore, it is a wise choice to prioritize temperature over anything.
2. Storage Duration
It goes without saying that the duration of the item's storage influences the amount of space and the level of refrigeration. Products with a high rate of turnover typically have lower cold storage capacity requirements but should be readily available. In the case of fruits or vegetables, they can be stored for a limited period of time, from 2 to 4 weeks, so you can expect a quick rotation of the product. This means you can benefit from lesser storage capacity in such a setting.
Some of the food items that are stored for a longer period of time include apples, potatoes, oranges or cabbage. These perishable goods are often placed in bulk. Therefore, you might require a larger storage capacity to accommodate the new arrivals that are added to the products still in stock. Also, it is essential to determine whether the product has a date of expiration before you decide on the right storage capacity.
3. Temperature Requirements
Not just storage duration, but your types of temperature zones also determine the size and configuration of your desired cold storage capacity solution. For a warehouse that stores both fresh and frozen products, you need two different areas, one for the chiller storage (Above 0°C) and another for the frozen storage (Below 0°C).
If you want to store the goods at huge temperature differences, then you might go for the multi chambers, each with its independent refrigeration system. The individuals also find multi-zone cold storage quite beneficial for better utilisation of space and flexibility. However, the said cold room requires insulation between each temperature zone. Overall, you need to check on packaging dimensions, pallets, boxes or single items for easy access, equipment placement, and good air circulation within the warehouse.
4. Packaging and Stacking
Good packaging and stacking methods are another aspect to keep in mind to fully optimise the capacity of the warehouse while reducing the chance of harm to the products. To do this, choose the standardised packaging sizes for efficient stacking and lessen the unused cold storage capacity. If your business is seasonal, then you might want to have extra cold storage capacity for those times.
The fragile and easily flattered products might require customised shelves for placement and to prevent potential damage. Thus, while stacking the goods on top of each other, check whether the process could cause harm to their quality. It is a good idea to invest in specifically designed shelves to fit the dimensions of your product and offer easy access to them. A proper inventory management system in place that prioritises first in, first out (FIFO) or first-expired first-out (FEFO) further contributes to reducing waste.
5. Business Scale
Last but not least, the ability of the company to grow while increasing its revenue or, in simple words, the business scale also determines the cold storage capacity. That is why start-ups or locally offered businesses opt for single-zone cold storage or even rent third-party storage. By doing this, they not only provide small-scale businesses with flexibility but also reduce the overhead cost by outsourcing the storage or utilising modular units.
While medium-scale business demands a strong solution that can handle diverse everyday inventories, for businesses expanding their product line, the multi-zone storage facility is the best-fitting for products with varied temperature requirements. This cold storage setting requires around 1-2 acres of land for necessary infrastructures and expansions, Land area may vary as per the requirement.
How to Calculate the Storage Capacity of a Cold Room?
Now that you know how to determine the right cold storage units appropriately, let's talk about the calculation of the cold storage capacity. To get started, you have to calculate exactly how much space is available, and the volume utilised in the cold room. Next, you need to find out the weight of the goods that are stored in the per cubic meters of the space based on the category of the inventory items.
As you advance, you determine the cold storage tonnage with the use cold storage capacity formula. The cold storage capacity formula means multiplying the internal volume of the cold storage room with the volume utilisation factor and weight per unit of food stored within the facility to find out how many tons of product can fit into the cold storage facility.
So, cold storage tonnage = Internal volume of cold storage room X volume utilisation factor X food unit weight. Following is the overall breakdown of cold storage capacity in practical terms.
- 500 ~ 1000 cubic metre = 0.40
- 1001 ~ 2000 cubic metre = 0.50
- 2001 ~ 10,000 cubic metre = 0.55
- 10,000 ~ 15,000 cubic metre = 0.60
Here, the cold storage utilisation coefficient is 4 within 1000 cubic metres of the internal cold storage. If placed scientifically, it is able to reach 0.5 to 0.6. Now, we listed down the estimated weight per cubic meter for various types of foods stored in cold storage.
- Frozen meat: Around 0.40 tons per cubic meters
- Frozen fish: Approximately 0.47 tons per cubic meters
- Fresh fruits and vegetables: Typically 0.23 tons per cubic metres
- Machine-made ice: Around 0.75 tons per cubic meters
- Frozen sheep carcass: Approximately 0.25 tons per cubic meters
- Boneless cut of meat: 0.60 tons per cubic meter
- Frozen boxed poultry: 0.55 tons per cubic meter in approx
Overall, this is just a general gist on how to calculate the storage capacity of the cold room. In order to calculate the precise total storage capacity of the cold room, you need training and experience within the cold room settings.
Types of Cold Storage Capacity Solutions
After knowing cold storage capacity in detail, the sizes of cold storage capacity solutions are categorised based on their internal volume or storage capacity in cubic meters (m³). This variety of sizes helps determine the practicality of cold rooms under specific business needs. Most of the categories include the small-sized, medium-sized and large-sized rooms that are as follows.
1. Small-sized cold rooms
Small-sized cold rooms are designed for a capacity not exceeding 30m³. Further, these are approximately 3X3 meters in area and roughly 3.3m high. Such kinds of cold storage are ideal for use in small-scale businesses; thereby, they come into play regarding storing perishable items in small quantitie for meat, fish or ice cream.
2. Medium-sized cold rooms
As its name suggests, medium-sized cold rooms are a type of cold storage capacity solution that is best fitting for organisations with medium requirements. This means you can take advantage of this cold room, particularly within the pharmaceutical laboratories, supermarket or hotel settings. In practical terms, such a facility comes with a capacity of up to 200m³. This could be 10 metres long, 5 metres wide, and 4 metres high.
3. Large-sized cold rooms
In large-sized cold rooms, you can have a wide range of large-scale perishable inventories as compared to small-sized and medium-sized cold rooms. They are manufactured with larger capacities in mind, meaning up to 300m³. This storage facility corresponds to dimensions such as 20 metres in length, 15 metres in width and 10 metres in height. These rooms happen to be indispensable for the warehouse spots or logistics centers and preserve their stocks and materials under specific climate conditions in bulk.
These are some of the key types of cold storage capacity solutions; besides the ones we mentioned above, depending on your specific needs, several other types may also be available.
Conclusion
Cold storage is a large refrigerator equipped with controlled temperatures. These cold rooms are designed to maintain a low temperature and preserve perishable goods. By carefully considering your needs and the demands of the industry, you should properly size your cold storage unit, which ensures optimal efficiency and preservation of your valuable products.
In this blog, we explored the details of cold storage capacity along with how much space you exactly need. We hope you find this helpful. If you seek further insight into various aspects of cold storage rooms, do check out some of our other blogs. And if you are looking for the best cold storage manufacturer in Nepal, then remember us at Nepcool. Thank you for reading till the end!
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FAQ Cold Storage Capacity: How Much Space Do You Really Need?
1. How much space is needed for cold storage?
The amount of space needed for cold storage can vary depending on several factors, including storage, land area, location, and energy usage. In small-scale cold storage, it can start with a minimum area of 1,000 square feet. However, they require more space, often around 1 or 2 acres.
2. How much cooling capacity do I need for cold storage?
The amount of cooling that you need for cold storage varies depending on the key aspect. This ranges from space you want to cool, climate, insulation and thermal load of the product, occupancy factor and size of the room.
3. How do I calculate how much space I need for storage?
To calculate how much space you need for storage, you need to consider the following steps.
- List all the products that you want to keep inside the facility.
- Determine the length, Width, and height of each item.
- Calculate the volume by multiplying the length, height, and Width.
- Then make a comparison of the volume of the product and the volume of the storage unit you are looking for.
4. Can I expand my cold storage capacity later?
Yes, of course, you can expand your cold capacity later. To do this, you can simply add more units, increase your available space with the efficient racking system, or even rent the cold storage space from another facility, whichever option works better in your case.