Temperature-controlled warehousing facility providing frozen and chilled product storage, order fulfillment, inventory management, and distribution services. Professional refrigerated distribution centers maintain distinct temperature zones for different product requirements (frozen -18°C or colder, chilled 0-4°C), implement FIFO inventory management, provide blast freezing capability, and offer value-added services including order consolidation, labeling, and quality control. Cold storage represents significant capital investment in insulated construction, industrial refrigeration systems, backup power, monitoring infrastructure, and trained personnel. In South Africa’s evolving frozen food market, refrigerated distribution center capacity is constraining growth – existing facilities often operate above capacity with degraded temperature control, while new facility investment faces economic challenges from high capital requirements and uncertain demand growth. Last-mile frozen delivery economics depend on efficient distribution centers enabling order consolidation and delivery density rather than direct-from-producer distribution creating uneconomic individual shipments.
Related Terms: Cold Chain Aggregation, Cold Chain Compliance (R638), Storage Temperature Requirements