About our cold rooms & pre-coolers
We specialize in cold rooms and precoolers for fresh fruit and vegetables on farms. Our cold rooms are the most efficient in their class for agribusiness.
At InspiraFarms, we have studied, developed and tested solutions for the key export crops from Africa and incorporated that experience in our solutions.
Our focus is to reduce shrinkage, provide extended shelf life and ensure maximum capture of the best harvest quality possible.
InspiraFarms cold room and pre-cooling solutions are designed by firstly considering the type of fruit and vegetables and their specific requirements on cold chain management.
Each solution is delivered with a specific configuration on temperature, pressure, relative humidity and airflow to maintain freshness as quickly as possible.
Key Features
- Our cold room panels are made of high density PUR (Polyurethane) to maximize the thermal insulation and grant our clients lower energy bills.
- We can offer cooling machinery based on your needs and budget such as direct expansion, blast-chillers and chiller-based cooling solutions.
- Our cold room compressors are the best in their class for their performance. They are matched with valves that help reduce energy consumption up to 23% per year.
- Dimensions range from 25 to 2,000m² or more.
- In-door and outdoor solutions are available that can be installed in your farm or everywhere.
- They can be powered by grid connected and hybrid solar solutions.
- They come with a cloud-based system to monitor your operations.
Benefits of our cold rooms
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Flexibility
You can position a cold room almost anywhere there is space, in-door or out-door.
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Crop specific
Our cold chain solutions are designed through crop by crop protocols to offer the best precooling and cold storage of your fresh product. We offer our clients custom temperatures, relative humidity, airflows and pressure are tuned for specific crop types enabling increase in quality and safety of our clients fruit and vegetables.
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On-farm
Our cold chain technology is designed to be placed on-farm to offer prompt extraction of field heat and placing cold chains to start at the farm, which are two key factors that allow significant reduction of losses and rejections.
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More revenues
Cold chain management for fruit and vegetables is essential to reduce claim risks and increase farm revenues and off takers satisfaction. With reduced shrinkage and increased shelf-life, our clients can have the possibility to shift from airfreight to sea freight reducing cost by unit of produce, increasing on farm revenues and helping emission reduction.
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Turnkey
InspiraFarms is a one stop shop solution. Every component required to build the cold room fits in a single container. Our clients can avoid hiring an architect, an engineer, a cold room panel supplier, a cold room machinery supplier, electricians, compliance technician, and then coordinate them.
Types of Cold rooms
We manage two ranges of cold rooms: outdoor and indoor
In-door cold rooms
Our indoor cold room is a modular solution that can be integrated within an already existing packhouse or infrastructure. Easily expandable, so it can grow with our customers needs. It can be used for either pre-cooling or cold storage.
The solutions are modular built with structural inter-locking with high density closed cells PUR (Polyurethane) cold room sandwich panels to ensure superior durability and energy efficiency in any climatic conditions. It is lightweight, expandable and fast and easy to install with short lead times.
Dimensions ranging from 30 to 1,000 m² and more, available in 3 to 5 meters of height. A span above 6 meters requires adequate hanging from the beams of the existing structures..
Features
- It can be matched with a variety of accessories such as sliding, roll-up and hinged cold room doors, bollards and railing.
- It can be served by a wide range of cooling machines, sensors and can be equipped with blast chillers for forced air precooling.
- Shipped as turn-key solutions, ready to be installed. It only requires concrete flooring and a roof.
- Designed to be operational and food safety certified immediately after installation.
- They can be integrated with K Plant range for operations that require large on-farm cold rooms and precooling solutions.
Out-door cold rooms
Our outdoor cold room range is a modular solution with weather-proof roof and structure so it can resist any climatic condition. Easily expandable so it can grow with our customers needs and can be used either for pre-cooling or cold storage.
It is a modular structure, built in 5 x 5 meters modules, with laser cut steel and hot-dip galvanized after welding to guarantee maximum durability in harsh environments. Walls and ceilings are made of high density closed cells PUR (Polyurethane) cold room sandwich panels to ensure superior durability and energy efficiency in any climatic conditions.
The full structure is lightweight, expandable and fast and easy to install. Completely self-standing and can grow in modules of 25 m², offering cold rooms and precoolers with dimensions ranging from 25 to 1,000m² and more, with 3 meters height.
Features
- Equipped with corrugated steel roofs and gutters that allow ventilation and the assembly of PV panels for solar hybrid cold rooms.
- It can be matched with a variety of accessories such as sliding, roll-up and hinged cold room doors, bollards and railing.
- It can be served by a wide range of cooling machines, sensors and can be equipped with blast chillers for forced air precooling.
- Guarantees seamless integration with packing floors, hygiene areas, packing material rooms, fresh produce QA labs and any other area required in post-harvest of fruit and vegetables.
- Shipped as turn-key solutions, ready to be installed. It only requires concrete flooring and a roof.
- Designed to be operational and food safety certified immediately after installation.
FAQs about Cold Rooms
Our cold rooms range from a minimum of 10 pallets to a maximum of over 1,000 pallets
The smaller dimension of our cold rooms is 25m² or 14 pallets of capacity.
Our cold rooms are powered by three-phase electric power (for smaller units in the range single-phase is possible, up to 7 kW of cooling capacity). The power can be from grid only or from a mix of grid, solar and diesel back-up
They can pre cool and store any fresh fruit and vegetables however, we specialize in precooling and storage of: Tropical fruits (avocados, mangoes, papaya, banana, pineapple, etc.), berries, stone fruits, citruses herbs, cruciferous, and roots. InspiraFarms cold rooms are designed and built for only storing and managing fruits and vegetables and not animal products, under positive temperatures – from zero degrees up (not freezing)
Reefer containers are designed to hold a specific temperature while in trucks or ships but they are not meant to precool. They miss the airflow control needed to treat fruit and vegetables. It is possible, but with a small fraction of the maximum allowed volume. Reefers available in most African countries have low coefficient performance compared to our equipment When they have been used for years, that coefficient performance lowers, bringing up the energy bill substantially.
No, we are specialists in fresh fruit and vegetables and we do not serve the meat or dairy industry.
Inspirafarms does not deliver frozen projects, we specialize in cold chains for fresh fruit and vegetable supply chains.
A three-phase grid connection, a concrete slab and an access road for a truck with a container trailer. The specifics about foundations, concrete work, slab insulation and finishing are operation and site specific. The concrete slab is part of the civil works and we therefore ask our clients to prepare before the deployment and assembly of our units. InspiraFarms provides guidance to customers on how to approach these civil works.
Our cold rooms are delivered containerized in a kit. Everything is delivered as part of the same consignment. From the structural part to the finishing and fittings. Following the site survey, a local engineer and contractor will be required to fit the cold room.
The ideal temperature of a cold room depends on the product, the stage of the supply chain and the target market. It is important to understand that temperature is not a key indicator of what is needed to treat fruit and vegetables. You can have a room with air temperature at 2°C and still have the pulp temperature of your fruit at 20°C for days.
It will depend on the size and capability of the cooling machine, for which we offer ranges from 8 to 100+kW of thermal power according to the type of crop and the cycle time. For example, cooling down one kg of a climacteric fruit might require as much as 10 times the energy it is required to keep it cool. Cold rooms for avocados for example require a lot of cooling power and a specific airflow. To cool down 10,000 kg of avocados, a minimum of 25 kW of cooling power is required. Enquire from us for more detailed answers for specific crops.
Yes, it does. All cold rooms need ventilation. Most of the ventilation is provided by daily door openings. InspiraFarms can provide air refreshment systems (with 80-85% heat recovery) if needed to avoid build up of specific gases.
Cold rooms are insulated by using sandwich panels. Our cold room panels are made of high density PUR (Polyurethane) to maximize the thermal insulation and grant our clients lower energy bills. Most companies in Africa are still using EPS (Styrofoam), but for the same thickness you get half the insulation from EPS. In addition, EPS is increasingly rejected by higher quality and value chains for the health and safety hazards they bring. Sub-optimal insulation can result in high energy bills, supply chain issues such as rejections and microbiological issues caused by condensation.
Yes, our modular cold rooms can be moved, although it’s a good idea to get the experts to do it. Trying to move the unit yourself would usually invalidate any warranty. The units are not mobile. For re-assembling you will need to have the civil works ready in the new site.
It depends on the size of the cold room, the range (out-door or in-door) and the cooling capacity. You can have a quick price estimation through our product online configurator.
Do you have questions or interested in starting a project?
Get in touch with our local team today!