What Are Ambient and Temperature-controlled Warehouses?
Temperature-controlled shipping and warehousing play an essential role in the transportation industry. Keeping goods at their ideal temperatures maintains quality or prevents spoilage and avoids unnecessary costs. But what is temperature-controlled warehousing? What goods require a temperature-controlled environment, and how can Atlanta Bonded Warehouse help? We’ll explore what temperature-controlled warehousing solution is right for which products below.
What is temperature-controlled warehousing?
A temperature-controlled warehouse is dedicated to storing, packaging, and dispatching goods that must be kept within specific temperatures to maintain the product’s quality and integrity. These warehouses use cooling systems such as air conditioning (HVAC) or mechanical refrigeration (either centralized or packaged systems) to ensure goods that pass through their facilities maintain their quality and freshness. Maintaining a controlled environment also protects goods from degrading via material temperature fluctuation.
Why is temperature-controlled warehousing needed?
Both perishable and non-perishable goods rely on specific temperatures and conditions to maintain quality and/or avoid spoilage. A warehouse’s inventory is particularly at risk during seasonal changes, as the temperatures rise in summer or drop in winter. A poorly maintained warehouse environment will damage goods, disrupting the supply chain and resulting in dissatisfied customers. In geographies where a warehouse experiences seasonal swings in temperature, a temperature-controlled environment also creates consistent work conditions so employees are not exposed to extreme heat during the summers or cold during the winters.
What types of products require temperature-controlled warehousing?
Many products rely on temperature-controlled warehousing. The temperatures required vary depending on the nature of the semi-perishable or non-perishable goods. Atlanta Bonded Warehouse offers mid-temperature and ambient warehousing solutions. Our ambient, or “room” temperature storage, is between 40°F and 90°F and mid-temperature solutions range between 55°F and 75°F.
Products in ambient storage require dry, clean, and pest-free environments and include non-perishable products such as canned food, bagged goods, glass-pack goods, or consumer packaged goods (CPG).
In mid-temperature warehousing, you will find goods that must be kept from high temperatures or humidity, including flour, rice and pasta, and packaging materials. We also store pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals (pharmaceutical alternatives derived from food sources and used for health benefits), which, as medicinal products, require stringent temperature-controlled standards. Temperature-sensitive products like confectionery, beverages, and snacks also require mid-temperature storage as exposure to higher temperatures will likely cause them to degrade.
Additional requirements: FDA and BRC approval
Atlanta Bonded Warehouse provides “Food Grade” warehousing, which has met the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and met the standards required by our British Retail Consortium (BRC) auditors. BRC is a best practice audit protocol and is now a widely utilized framework for promoting benchmarking to the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).
The FDA maintains strict safety standards to ensure all facilities, equipment, and materials used to store or produce food are compliant to prevent food-related illnesses and cross-contamination across the products. Regular inspections from the FDA or their state-authorized agencies ensure warehouses meet these standards and that all food products are stored at appropriate temperatures in clean, well-maintained operations.
ABW’s temperature-controlled warehousing solutions for you
Atlanta Bonded Warehouse operates 11 warehouses in metro Atlanta, Georgia. Additionally, we manage four more dedicated facilities in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi. In total, Atlanta Bonded Warehouse manages 6.5 million square feet of space. Our warehousing solutions are flexible so that we can provide efficient, high-quality service to customers of any size. We have a long history of service to customers in the confectionary, food, beverage, pharmaceutical, and CPG industries, with a proven record of consistent excellence and efficiency.
To learn more about our temperature-controlled warehousing solutions, contact us today.