When planning the construction of a warehouse facility, the process owner faces the difficult task of selecting a contractor. The accuracy of its decisions will largely determine the success of the project. It is therefore advisable to invite an experienced general warehouse contractor with a history of completed industrial buildings of different nature. Commercecon is the company whose portfolio includes both high-bay warehouses, production buildings and production and warehouse buildings, modern logistics centres, as well as cold storage and freeze storage buildings for the food industry.
The most common types of warehouse buildings
When thinking about warehouse buildings, we usually think of a large facility built on the outskirts of cities for the logistics sector or the e-commerce industry. Why? It was all due to the Covid pandemic, when the warehouses were being built rapidly and at a very fast pace. However, it is important to know that storage buildings can vary considerably in terms of structure, height, floor space, the technology used inside the building, but also the equipment, which is adapted to the type of goods stored.
As you can see there are many types of warehouse buildings. The most common are high-bay warehouses and industrial buildings for production and storage, but among other warehouse building types there are automated logistics centres or specialised buildings such as cold stores and freeze storage buildings used for storing and sorting fruit and vegetables. Find out a few features of each of them.
High-bay warehouses
Storage facilities come in various types depending on the criterion adopted. One of the most important is the clear height of the building. It is not interpreted as the maximum height of the structure, but it refers to the ceiling height that limits the storage of goods.
According to this criterion, warehouses are divided into low (up to 4.2 metres working height), medium (between 4.2 and 7.2 metres) and high (higher than 7.2 metres working height). The last group are referred to as high-bay warehouses and feature the best ratio of the area occupied (m2) and the space used inside. And although such constructions require special machinery (e.g. specialised forklift trucks) and appropriate work organisation, it can be assumed that the higher the high-bay warehouse, the greater its profitability per m2 will be. Commercecon has completed many such facilities for its customers, including K-Flex, Katoen Natie and Rossmann.
As far as the construction law is concerned, high-bay warehouses do not have a separate definition either in standards or in Polish health and safety regulations. They are therefore subject to the same guidelines as other storage facilities and must be built in accordance with the good building practice and with all aspects related to their future use taken into account. And in this case, much depends on the type of materials stored and how they are stored. One should be aware that the implementation of some logistics systems may result in the need for specialised safety solutions, such as fire sprinkler systems or ventilation and smoke removal systems. This is why it is so important to provide detailed information on the target modes of operation of the facilities to both the building designer and the warehouse general contractor.
Industrial buildings for production and storage
The industrial facilities built in Poland combine two functions very often. These consist of the production space and the storage area, which, on one hand, can provide a component base for the production process, and, on the other, helps store finished products and subsequently distribute them. These are also the types of facilities that the Commercecon team most often provides.
The construction of dual-purpose facilities requires appropriate coordination of construction processes. Why? The construction work for erecting the load-bearing structure of the production and storage section must be integrated smoothly with the preparatory work for the process and production line.
Commercecon has completed these types of buildings for TREFL Playing Card Factory, Długopolanka mineral water bottling plant, Geberit and KORPO, among others.
Modern logistics and distribution centres
Also a type of warehouse, logistics and distribution centres belong to transport, courier or internet sales companies. They are usually built on the outskirts of larger cities, close to large customer markets.
They are usually built with a steel and reinforced concrete structure, which allows the building to be perfectly tailored to the client’s needs in terms of the logistics operations carried out, the range of which is wide. What is more, buildings erected in this way guarantee a wide choice in terms of the location of the docks, which are an integral part of this type of warehouse. They can be upgraded quite easily at a later stage of operations, and adapted to customers’ changing needs over time.
A logistics building for DPD Polska, one of the largest courier companies in Europe, is an example of such a project in Commercecon’s portfolio. With a total area of almost 6,300 square metres, the facility uses one of the largest and most modern sorters in the country, which operates at a capacity of 6,000 parcels per hour. In order to optimise logistics processes, the building has 16 gates for unloading and loading line trucks and 61 courier gates.
Cold rooms and freezer warehouses for the food industry – a specialist storage building
Due to the seasonality of crops, including the fruit and vegetable harvest, which lasts from March to October on average in our country, storing the harvested crop is not easy. This is facilitated by appropriately designed facilities that act as industrial sorting plants and cold stores. The need to maintain specific thermal and moisture conditions inside makes it necessary during design and construction to use building materials and components that are not only thermally insulating, but also gas-tight.
During the construction of fruit and vegetable warehouses, but also during the construction of freezer warehouses for foodstuffs, it is crucial to construct building envelopes of the highest quality, which are free of thermal bridges and ensure that the right temperature and humidity parameters are maintained. For this type of warehouse buildings, it is also important to limit the access of natural light (which can accelerate the ripening of the fruit) and to ensure the correct gaseous composition of the air, which is achieved with special technological equipment.
As a warehouse general contractor, Commercecon can boast an exceptionally well completed freezer warehouse for the food industry. It is the industrial facility owned by STARMEAT Sp. z o.o., which is one of the largest producers of minced poultry meat in Europe. The 3,500 square metres area includes a process floor, a refrigeration machinery room and a two-storey office, but it is the high-bay freezer building that is of particular note, as its technology was supplied by the world’s leading provider of industrial refrigeration solutions Johnson Controls.
More than 280 completed industrial facilities of various purposes, excellent feedback from existing customers and, above all, an experienced and well-coordinated team are the characteristics of a general contractor which should certainly be entrusted with the construction of production facilities and warehouse buildings.
