Vegetable and Fruit Packhouse

New 10,400m³ vegetable and fruit packhouse and cold store facility

Client: APS Salads, Camblesforth, Selby

Project overview:

This project involved the decommissioning and demolition of an existing fruit and vegetable packing facility, and the building of a new temperature controlled facility and cold store.

It included an extensive amount of building work, de-gassing and demolition of numerous refrigeration systems, air handling equipment and large ducting to make room for the new packhouse facility.

The new, high-quality large temperature controlled packhouse and cold room fruit store has a floor area of 2600m² and a total volume of 10,400m³, with several loading bays to accommodate numerous HGV’s. In order to ensure all crops which are packed and stored ready for collection and transportation to customers, the facility required an operational temperature of +10°C.

The solution:

The facility was built using 100mm cold room panels for all the walls, and 150mm thick cold room panels for the ceiling. Tight temperature uniformity and air distribution allows air velocities to be used to minimise the draft effect for workers, and also ensures the correct rate of cooling.

To manage the temperature and avoid large temperature swings a chilled water cooling system has been used, with the chilled water being supplied by a 300kW air cooled water chiller, supplying chilled water to six large coolers at +2.0°C. To allow safe use of the chilled water a food safe glycol additive is used which can protect the system down to -15°C if needed.

All coolers where fitted with a specialised fabric ducting air diffuser system to meet the air distribution needs, allowing large air volume flows to be used whilst meeting the strict specification for the client and end user.

The benefits for our clients:

Ultimately this facility has provided the client with the ideal environment to pack and store grown produce in thousands, at any one time as it awaits collection for delivery to customers.

All harvested crop is cooled from 25°C to 10°C at the correct rate to avoid condensation formation of the surface of the produce.

It also ensures produce does not deteriorate as it goes through the packaging and storing process before collection and delivery to customers. The facility also provides a comfortable working environment for workers.