How to Reduce Cold Storage Costs
With round-the-clock monitoring, energy costs, labor and facility upkeep, maintaining a smooth, organized and efficient cold storage warehouse can be expensive. Controlling operational costs and staying on budget can be difficult, but with some simple tweaks to your facility and daily operations, you can reduce your overall costs, streamline your processes and have a significant return on investment.
Minimize Cold Storage Costs
By incorporating these three tips to reduce your cold storage expenses, you can significantly reduce your upfront costs without sacrificing quality and service.
1. Upgrade Building Materials
To have a quality, cost-effective cold storage facility, you need to incorporate several building upgrades to reduce the amount of heat and cool air transference. Significant energy loss can increase utility costs and cause your appliances to work hard, driving up your energy costs and leading to premature wear and tear. With improved building materials, you can prolong the lifespan of your equipment, ensure the quality of your inventory and reduce cold storage expenses.
Several building improvements to consider include:
- LED Lighting: Improved LED lightbulbs are superior lighting solutions — using them throughout your facility can reduce your energy consumption by up to 12 percent.
- Specialty Doors: Reduce the size and number of exterior facing doorways throughout your facility to minimize air leakage and prevent excessive air exchange between indoor and outdoor environments. Also, consider upgrading your doors to include added insulation for superior performance.
- Dock Seals: Docks are another opening that allows significant energy loss. With improved dock seals placed in your shipping area, you can reduce unwanted infiltration.
- Insulated Panels: Insulated panels are a great way to better maintain your interior environment. You can install them throughout your facility in the distribution center, freezer and other parts of your building. With these panels, you can have better, more regulated temperature control and lessened cold storage costs.
- Reflective Roofing Materials: With the sun’s heat beating on the roof of your building, heat can easily be transferred to your cold storage areas, driving up the temperature of your indoor environments. By installing reflective panels, you can reduce the amount of heat exposure your building receives.
2. Incorporate Cold Storage Automation
Part of running a successful cold storage warehouse is maintaining efficient and reliable operations. The best way to streamline your storage and shipping capabilities is by incorporating cold storage automation in your warehouse. Automation uses robots to minimize human involvement in daily tasks.
With automated vehicles and storage and retrieval systems, you can achieve safer environments and more accurate fulfillment, faster shipping, lower energy costs, reduced employment costs and reduced waste. With the undeniable efficiency provided only by cold storage automation, you can save on your energy costs and warehousing expenses.
3. Use Variable Frequency Drives
A variable frequency device helps control your air conditioning motor speed and torque — without the use of a slide valve — by easily setting the capacity of your compressor, allowing you better control and reducing waste.
Having greater control over your equipment means you can set levels to an optimal operating level to reduce energy use and wear. On average, the fan of a compressor working at 50 percent of its available speed will use just over 12 percent of its energy, which can substantially reduce your operational costs and the amount of heat your equipment produces. While this may seem like a minor adjustment, you’ll begin to notice the decreased costs over time.
Trust Central Florida Freezer for All Your Storage Needs
For the most efficient and reliable cold storage solution throughout central Florida, reach out to the team at Central Florida Freezer. With our state-of-the-art storage facility, we can accommodate food and beverage warehousing needs of any size or specification and ship items directly from our location in a timely manner. To learn more about our cold, ambient, climate-controlled and freezer storage options fill out our online contact form or call us today at 352-365-6969.
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