A pharmaceutical manufacturer supplying the NHS, pharmacies and healthcare organisations needed to increase its cold storage capacity. We designed and installed a cold store of approximately 40 metres by 10 metres, held between +2°C and +8°C, with full refrigeration backup and continuous monitoring.
The challenge
The client’s existing storage could no longer keep pace with the volume it was handling. More space was the obvious requirement. For pharmaceutical stock, though, the harder requirement is that the temperature never leaves its band — product held outside +2°C to +8°C may have to be written off, and the loss is rarely just the value of the goods. It is the supply to the organisations depending on it.
So this was not simply a larger cold room. It was a cold room that had to keep holding temperature through a plant failure or a power cut, and be able to show that it had.
Site constraints
The store had to work as part of a live operation: wide enough for the traffic in and out, and laid out so that door openings did not repeatedly pull the temperature about. Redundancy could not be bolted on later either. Retrofitting a second refrigeration system to a working pharmaceutical store is far more disruptive than building it in from the start, so it was designed in.
Our solution
A cold store of approximately 40 metres by 10 metres, maintained between +2°C and +8°C, with 100% refrigeration backup — a complete second system rather than partial standby capacity.
An automatic changeover panel switches to the backup system without anyone needing to be on site to notice and intervene. The installation is linked to a generator, so a loss of mains supply does not become a loss of stock.
Equipment and monitoring
A 16-point data logger records conditions across the store rather than at a single sensor — which matters in a space this size, where one corner can behave differently from another. An auto-dialler alarm raises an alert by telephone if conditions move out of range, so a problem at three in the morning is not first discovered at eight.
Result
The client gained the additional capacity it needed, in a store designed so that a single failure does not become a temperature excursion, and with a record of conditions that can be produced when it is asked for.
Related services
Commercial refrigeration · Servicing & maintenance · Emergency repairs
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If you need temperature-critical storage, or you are not certain your current arrangements would survive a plant failure, telephone 0800 952 0081 or send us the details.