Frozen Automated Warehouse

NXL undertook this 50,000 sf fully automated frozen warehouse for an established food manufacturer known mostly in North America for their unique brand of pizzas. The heart of the project is a fully-automated, frozen, high-bay warehouse that is supported by a staging zone, shipping/receiving, and office space.  The high-bay warehouse (HBW) is fed by an automated conveyor and crane system that delivers the pallets of frozen pizzas from the plant and to the shipping area. Most of this addition will operate at cold temperature of -26C. The HBW has racking that forms the structure of this portion of the building. Due to the height of the structure and the overturning moment, the HBW sits on a raft slab that is 1500 mm thick.

The frozen warehouse, an addition to the existing pizza manufacturing plant, is intended to be a duplicate of the owner’s existing manufacturing operations in Europe. To achieve this comparable quality, NXL worked closely with the owner’s European consultants to ensure that strict quality standards were being met during the design and construction of this addition. NXL was responsible for the coordination of third-party conveyor systems into the design of the facility as well as the integration of refrigeration systems into the HBW and Logistics portions of the building.

The project design included a “reduced-oxygen” fire prevention system that is common in Europe, but had never before been used in North America. The system eliminates the need for a traditional sprinkler system, which is likely to compromise both product and the extensive automation in a frozen warehouse.  NXL worked with the local authorities to successfully introduce and implement the system – a first such approval in North America.