And no, it’s not as easy as – I have frozen or refrigerated freight, therefore – I need to keep it frozen or refrigerated!
That’s way too easy for a smart, talented group of readers like you.
Before I get into some of the reasons you may need a climate controlled warehouse, I’ll tell you about some of the actual problems I’ve seen in the past when people wished that they had used climate controlled space.
You wouldn’t think these would lead to problem situations, but heat and moisture can wreak havoc in a short amount of time. Especially if you’re in Florida where as I’m writing this, the relative humidity is at 73%!
Story One: A Sticky Situation
A paper coater that makes commercial adhesive backed paper needs extra storage to keep their inventory of finished goods. Luckily, a small manufacturer on the same street has closed their business a few months earlier and they have just enough storage space to hold the excess inventory.
Unfortunately, once the adhesive is pressed to the paper, it needs a stable (cool) environment to “cure” and set.
You can guess the rest of this story…
The finished product was moved from finishing, to the truck, down the street to the “new” warehouse. The fluctuation in temperature and humidity prevented the adhesive from setting and the manufacturer was left with 32,000 pounds of wet, sticky, runny, bubbly (useless) paper.
Story Two: It Cost HOW MUCH!
Silicon wafer reclamation is a niche industry with just a few companies that can do it effectively. In simple language, silicon wafers are the material that semiconductors are made from. The semiconductor manufacturers used “reclaimed” silicon wafers to test equipment and/or new circuitry. When they were through with them, they send these wafers to the reclamation facilities to be “cleaned” and reused.
Because water is deadly to semiconductors, the process had to be tightly controlled, especially the final processing in a climate controlled cleanroom.
This story goes bad when the reclaim facility does everything right in storing the wafers correctly through the process, but leaves the plastic wrapped airtight plastic carriers on pallets in a part of the facility that isn’t climate controlled.
Moisture saw an opportunity to get into the unprotected carriers which went into the cleanroom and the once dry wafers became contaminated. They in turn contaminated the manufacturers’ equipment and the problem mushroomed costing the reclaimers about one hundred thousand dollars!
Climate Control – Not Just for Food
So unfortunately, it’s not always enough to protect your load by ensuring it’s packaged well or even airtight.
As you can see from these examples, your valuable inventory may be susceptible to a similar fate. And you may not even know that it’s happening when it’s happening.
With the silicon wafers, the humidity was there, but it wasn’t easy to see.
Don’t subject your inventory to the same potentially harmful moisture.
Call us cool guys (sorry) at Commercial Warehousing. We’re experts in climate control and we offer you a number of options for storing and moving your freight.
We’ve been doing climate controlled warehousing for over 50 years so yeah, we know what we’re talking about. Talk to us and we’ll let you know whether your product needs climate controlled storage based on our experience.
Some of the factors to consider when determining whether you need refrigerated or climate controlled storage depends on things like:
• Your product
• The time of year
• The amount of time freight will stay in storage (if you can predict)
• Your freight movement process like First-In, First-Out (FIFO) which is good or First-In, Last-Out (FILO) which may or may not be bad depending on the other factors.
As you can see from the above examples, climate control is serious business when you’re in Florida and your product can be affected by the heat.
And there is a science to adequately controlling climate to ensure that your product remains protected so be sure to choose your warehousing facility carefully.
If it’s determined that your product should have refrigeration protection to prevent spoilage or other heat and humidity related issues; you’ll want to make sure that the product stays cool when it’s moved from inventory to the truck.
And, oh yeah, make sure the truck is refrigerated as well. There’s no sense keeping product cold in storage only to leave it unprotected while it’s moving.
So be cool and call us today and discuss all of your freight storage and logistics needs – We’re here to help!
