Another stage completed at new Agristo cold store

Egemin Automation has embarked upon a new major phase in the construction of the new deepfreeze warehouse for frozen french fries and potato specialties manufacturer Agristo in Nazareth, with the installation of the automated stacker cranes.

Egemin Automation was commissioned earlier last year to build a new automated deep-freeze warehouse for Belgian producer of frozen French fries Agristo on its production site in East Flanders. The new high-bay warehouse will be 44 metres high and eight AS/RS stacker cranes will be deployed to store frozen French fries.

With its 15 storage levels and eight crane aisles it will provide space for 24,000 pallets or 17,000 tons of frozen fries. Egemin already did a similar project for Agristo in Tilburg, the Netherlands in 2012, and has the completion date of the deep-freeze warehouse in Nazareth planned for March 2016.

The last of the eight cranes has now been hoisted into the high-bay warehouse and now the installation will be put into operation from the end of February in order to ensure the completion of the entire project.

Egemin has already installed the 23-tonne cranes in the eight crane aisles of the warehouse, which has 15 storage levels. The lifting operations required a great deal of precision because of the bad weather conditions of the last weeks, but also because of the size of the cranes.

Now with the last crane in place, Egemin will fix the roofing and outer wall elements to the warehouse racks of the clad rack construction, and will also fit out other areas of the warehouse.

The warehouse will be completely cold drawn in February. During the cooling, the installations will be tested and adjusted continuously, so that upon reaching -25°C, the warehouse will be fully operational.

"The first Agristo pallets need to find a temporary place in our new cold store in early March," says Carmen Wallays, Procurement & Logistics Director at Agristo. "This 15-million-euro investment is part of the continuing growth of Agristo and it is the first step in expanding production at the production site in Nazareth in East Flanders."

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