Fonterra opens country's largest coolstore
Fonterra has opened New Zealand's largest coolstore at the Crawford Rd site in Hamilton, which is a major logistics hub."This coolstore is the central point for all butter and cheese made in the Waikato -- the final stop before it's packed into conta
Fonterra has opened New Zealand's largest coolstore at the Crawford Rd site in Hamilton, which is a major logistics hub.
"This coolstore is the central point for all butter and cheese made in the Waikato -- the final stop before it's packed into containers and railed directly to the port. That's over 235 million retail-sized blocks of Mainland cheese or around 500 million standard packs of Anchor butter," said Fonterra managing director trade and operations Gary Romano.
He said the new cool store marked a big step forward in Fonterra's logistics chain.
Butter and cheese was previously stored in third party stores around the region.
The dairy company already has a large dry store at the Crawford Rd site, which is integrated with the KiwiRail network. The use of rail in the region by Fonterra has reduced truck movements per year by 65,000.
Fonterra said it expects to ship more than 235,000 metric tonnes of butter and cheese per year from the new coolstore which is 230m long and 87m wide.
It took 12 months to build, with more than 550 workers putting 140,000 hours of work in.
Automated loaders can stack cheese up to 11m high and butter 27 pallets deep.
The coolstore has fire resistant wall panels and a "dry pipe" sprinkler system capable of pumping more than 9000 litres of water per minute.
The company is developing another hub in Mosgiel near Dunedin with a 45,000 metric tonne dry store and 17,000 metric tonne cool store.
The 2008 cool store explosion at Tamahere killed firefighter Derek Lovell and seriously injured seven of his colleagues. Icepak Coolstores and Mobile Refrigeration Specialists were fined after that event.
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