40 | LOGISTICS Manawatu Cold Storage Ltd Industrial, Commercial &Dairy Refrigeration Service Engineered Cooling & Heating Solutions. Projects large or small Local Servicewith Nationwide support froma 100%NZ owned business. www.activerefrigeration.co.nz Phone 06 280 2338 24 Hour Service Investing in six new blast freezers ‘The footprint remained the same but we had to completely reconfigure the access way and the siting of the two parts of the building.’ T T Hugh de Lacy Construction of Manawatu Cold Storage’s six new blast freezers is at last under way after being held up initially by an unanticipated provision of the Resource Management Act (RMA), and by November the company will have an extra 168 metric tonnes of capacity compared to the 84 tonnes it has at the moment. “We started planning the expansion hard on the heels of our previous increase in capacity in 2019, when we brought three new blast freezers and 800m2 of new freezer space online, only to discover our plans were running foul of the RMA,” Manawatu Cold Storage’s General Manager Brent Cawthray says. “We discovered that 40% of our site was designated as wetlands under a 2020 land use change, and we couldn’t build within ten metres of it. “That was a kick in the guts, and it took a lot of work by our engineers, Silvester Clark, to re-shape the expansion. “The footprint remained the same but we had to completely reconfigure the access way and the siting of the two parts of the building, and it caused a significant delay. “But we’re under way now, and we’ll have the job completed by the end of the year.” The new blast freezers will be powered by environment-friendly ammonia gas, to which the existing freezers were converted in the earlier expansion. Manawatu Cold Storage, known fondly to its staff and clients as Mancold or MCS, already has seven freezer rooms with a total capacity of 12,000 pallets, and the added capacity is in response to rapidly increasing demand from exporters of agricultural products in particular, but also the greatly expanded imports of pork for the New Zealand market. The pork is imported mainly on behalf of Rangitikei Meat Distributors and Wairarapa-based Premier Beehive, with Mancold receiving the latter’s and distributing them to its processing plants. The big agricultural product exporters include the Alliance, ANZCO and AFFCO meat companies, while Tegel Chicken has also become a significant client in recent years. Formed nearly 40 years ago as Eljay’s Icebox by Larry Evans with a single small storage room, Mancold rapidly grew to six rooms on the back of demand originally driven by the New Zealand Dairy Board, though these days it’s meat and associated products that are pushing the company’s expansion. Mancold went through a change of ownership when Larry Evans’ sons took over in the early 1990s, and it was then acquired by an overseas owner in 2015. Brent, a former Police officer who had been with the company since 1989, was appointed General Manager with responsibility for major expansion of the facilities in response to booming demand. Today the Mancold facilities cover 4800m2 but the new freezer building will add a further 1350m2 to that. Brent believes Mancold is the best in the business, with a service built around not only modern and environment-friendly plant, but around a staff of 35 who are “experienced and knowledgeable and give 100% every day. “Our staff are our greatest asset,” he says. 54 Hartwell Drive Palmerston North 4470 | 06 356 9936 | info@basis.co.nz | www.basis.co.nz Basis are proud to support Manawatu Cold Storage Ltd since 1986 with the Basis Warehouse Management System. Manawatu Cold Storage Ltd are trusted to look after High Value, Export and Domestic Primary Produce for their clients, and choose Basis to provide the tools for Accurate, Efficient, reliable Inventory Management • Full Featured Inventory Management System • Product Track and Trace • Individual Item Barcode Scanning • Product State / Product Status / Item History Management • Fully Integrated to NZ Ministry of Primary Industries AP-ECERT (Animal Products Certification System) • Integrated Accounting Functionality
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