Buying · 8 min
What to look at on a cold chain show floor, and what to walk past
Three halls, four hundred stands and two days. Most of it is not for you. Here is the part that is.
Project cost Guide
How much land a cold store actually needs
The chamber footprint is the small part. Approach, truck turning, weighbridge and yard are what catch people out.
The short answer
- The chambers take less room than people expect. The site takes more.
- A loaded truck needs room to turn, reverse to a dock and wait — and in season there will be several at once.
- A yard that works in June fails in March, because June is not the season.
- Budget approach, setbacks, weighbridge, yard and future expansion before deciding a plot is big enough.
01What the site has to hold besides the store
- An approach road a loaded truck can use in monsoon, not only in dry weather.
- Turning circle and reversing space at the dock.
- Waiting space for the queue that forms in the first week of the season.
- A weighbridge, if you intend to weigh rather than argue.
- Genset, transformer, fuel storage and their statutory clearances.
- Setbacks required locally, which vary and are not negotiable at inspection.
- Room for the second phase, if there is any chance of one.
02The expansion trap
Stores that succeed usually want to expand, and the cheapest expansion is a chamber against an existing wall. That is only possible if the plot was bought with it in mind and nothing was built where it needed to go.
A generator sited for convenience in year one has stopped many a second chamber in year four.
03A note on quoted figures
Any land requirement quoted per MT is a rule of thumb from somebody else’s layout, at somebody else’s stacking height, on somebody else’s plot shape. Use it to shortlist plots, never to buy one.
04Common questions
- How much land is required for a 5,000 MT cold storage?
- It depends on stacking height, chamber layout and plot shape more than on capacity alone. The chambers need less room than most people expect; the approach road, truck turning and waiting area, weighbridge, genset and statutory setbacks need more. Use per-MT rules of thumb to shortlist plots, not to buy one.
- What is usually forgotten when buying land for a cold store?
- Space for the second phase. The cheapest expansion is a chamber built against an existing wall, and that is only possible if nothing else — commonly the generator — was put where it needed to go.
- Does the approach road matter for a cold storage site?
- Yes. It has to carry a loaded truck in monsoon, not only in dry weather, and it has to allow several trucks at once during the loading season.