Cold Chain Project Procurement: From Heat Load to Comparable RFQ

Two cold stores with the same pallet count can differ by a factor of two in refrigeration duty. What separates them is what goes in the door: product entering warm and needing pull-down versus product arriving already chilled, high door traffic versus low, a well-sealed envelope versus one with thermal bridging, and design ambient conditions that differ by 15 °C.

• Temperature regimes and the split between them: ambient, chilled, frozen, blast, and any controlled-atmosphere rooms.
• Throughput: pallets in and out per day, peak season versus average, and the pull-down duty implied.
• Product data: entry temperature, specific heat, respiration heat for produce, packaging and stacking.
• Envelope: panel thickness, floor heating under freezers, vapour sealing, dock seals and air curtains.
• Refrigerant and architecture: NH₃, CO₂ transcritical or cascade, HFO — with the local regulation and service reality.
• Energy: installed kW, annual kWh estimate, heat recovery, and the tariff and power reliability on site.
• Automation: racking, ASRS, WMS interfaces and the degree of manual handling assumed.

• Design ambient and design duty: each supplier's assumed summer condition changes the plant size.
• Civil, floor slab, under-floor heating and drainage — inside or outside the package.
• Electrical supply, transformers, standby generation and power factor correction.
• Refrigerant charge, safety systems, machinery room classification and local statutory approvals.
• Commissioning, pull-down trial, performance test method and the ambient at which it is measured.
• Service and spare parts availability in the destination country — the single biggest lifetime risk.
• Energy guarantee: stated in kWh, on which load profile, and with what remedy if missed.

Illustrative planning scenarios built from standard published engineering parameters. Not client cases, not quotations, no outcome implied.

1. 01
   Illustrative A — Multi-temperature distribution centre

   Chilled, frozen and ambient zones under one roof with a shared dock. Defined by daily pallet throughput per zone and peak-season factor rather than by total volume. Scope covers envelope, refrigeration plant, dock equipment, racking and controls, with the RFQ stating design ambient, pull-down duty, energy target in kWh per pallet position per year and the measurement method for the performance test.

2. 02
   Illustrative B — Produce pack-house with pre-cooling

   Reception, pre-cooling (forced-air or hydro), grading, packing and short-term chilled storage. The decisive parameters are the harvest-peak intake per day, the required pull-down time from field heat to storage temperature, and the respiration load of the specific crop. The RFQ separates the pre-cooling duty from the storage duty so proposals cannot hide one inside the other.

3. 03
   Illustrative C — Freezing capacity added to an operating plant

   Adding blast or spiral freezing to a running facility. The brownfield interface governs: existing plant spare capacity, electrical headroom, floor loading, shutdown window and tie-in sequence. The RFQ includes an as-built pack, permitted shutdown days and a commissioning plan that protects existing production.

1. 01
   Define

   Temperature regimes, throughput, site, ambient design conditions and timeline in writing.

2. 02
   Calculate

   Independent CapEx range plus an energy model — cold chain decisions are won or lost on kWh.

3. 03
   Structure the RFQ

   Design duty, refrigerant, battery limits, exclusions, performance test and acceptance criteria.

4. 04
   Research capability

   Contractors and manufacturers assessed on comparable duty, refrigerant experience and local service.

5. 05
   Compare

   Normalise to one design basis, surface exclusions, review TCO over the asset life.

6. 06
   Financing readiness

   Documentation completeness checked before any lender, lessor or ECA conversation.

Every stage is human-reviewed. No automatic matching; no introduction without approval by David or an authorised team member.

• It is not a refrigeration contractor, manufacturer or logistics operator.
• It publishes no supplier directory and sells no rankings.
• It does not lend, broker finance or approve credit.
• It guarantees no supplier, price, delivery date, energy performance or test outcome.
• Formal review and supplier research generally apply from roughly US$250,000 of installed value.