Cold rooms for food factories form a chain: raw material stores, processing rooms, blast chilling or freezing, finished goods stores and a cooled dispatch dock. Each link runs at its own temperature. Place them in production order so product moves one way, from raw to finished. This guide gives typical temperatures and the construction, capacity and record-keeping points that auditors check.
The cold areas of a food factory
| Area | Typical temperature | Design note |
|---|---|---|
| Raw material chiller | General chilled goods 0 to +4 °C. Fresh meat and poultry -1 to +2 °C. Fresh fish around 0 °C. Dairy +2 to +4 °C | Separate rooms or zones by product type, close to receiving |
| Raw material freezer | -18 °C or colder | Insulated floor, heated door frame and heated pressure relief valve |
| Cutting and processing rooms | Commonly +10 to +12 °C | People work here for hours. Low air speed and good drainage |
| Blast chiller | From +70 °C to +3 °C at the core within 90 minutes | Sized by batch weight. Two doors let trays pass from cooking to packing |
| Blast freezer | To -18 °C at the core within about 240 minutes. Air typically -30 to -40 °C | Panels typically 150 to 200 mm thick |
| Finished goods chiller | 0 to +4 °C | Packed product only, on shelving or pallet racking |
| Finished goods freezer | -18 °C or colder. Ice cream -23 to -25 °C | Frost heave protection under large rooms built on the ground |
| Dispatch dock or anteroom | +2 to +8 °C | Keeps the cold chain between store and truck |
These are typical values. Your product, your process and the applicable SFDA requirements decide the final figures, so confirm them with your suppliers and your food safety team. Each chiller room and freezer room is then designed around its own figure. See also our guide to cold room temperature by product.
One direction, from raw to finished
Lay out the areas in the order the product travels: receiving, raw storage, preparation, cooking or processing, blast chilling or freezing, packing, finished storage and dispatch. Product never turns back. The cold rooms help to enforce this:
- Raw materials and finished goods never share a room, a door or a trolley.
- Receiving and dispatch use separate docks where the building allows.
- A blast chiller with two doors takes trays on the cooking side and releases them on the packing side.
- Waste and returned goods leave by a route that does not cross finished product.
- Cartons and wooden pallets stay out of rooms with open product.
Staff follow the same logic, with changing and hand-washing points between the raw side and the finished side. A layout that sends cooked product past the raw meat chiller is a fault no cleaning routine can fix.
Hygienic construction
A factory cold room gets washed down often. Build it for that:
- Panels: smooth, washable skins. Pre-painted galvanized steel suits most stores. Stainless steel is the option for wet processing rooms and areas cleaned with strong chemicals.
- Core: PUR or PIR foam. PIR has better fire performance. Check Civil Defense requirements for your building.
- Joints: tight and sealed, so water and dirt stay out of the panel.
- Floor junctions: coved, with no sharp corner to trap dirt.
- Floors: non-slip, resistant to cleaning chemicals and wheel loads, sloped toward the drains in wet rooms.
- Drains: stainless steel and easy to open for cleaning. In freezers the evaporator drain lines need heaters.
- Evaporators: placed so condensate cannot drip onto open product.
- Protection: kerbs or bumper rails where pallet trucks run.
Every room needs a continuous vapour barrier on the warm side. In a freezer, moisture that enters a panel turns to ice and ruins the insulation. More detail is in our guide to cold room panels.
Capacity for production peaks
A store has two capacities. One is space: how many pallets it holds. The other is cooling: how many kilograms of warm product it brings down to temperature per hour. The second one is easier to overlook. Give the designer these figures:
- Kilograms per batch and batches per shift, on a normal day and on a peak day.
- Product temperature on entering each room and the time allowed to reach target.
- Pallets in stock at the seasonal peak, for example before Ramadan or during the date harvest. Standard pallets are 1.2 x 1.0 m or 1.2 x 0.8 m.
- Shifts per day and the growth you expect.
A blast chiller sized for the average day becomes the bottleneck on the peak day. Trolleys queue in the corridor and product warms while it waits. Running hours show your reserve. Systems are commonly designed for about 16 to 18 compressor running hours per day in chilled rooms and 18 to 20 in freezers. A system that runs around the clock on a normal day has nothing left for a peak.
Redundancy: plan for the day a compressor stops
In a factory a refrigeration failure stops production and puts the whole stock at risk. Decide in advance what must keep running:
- Several compressors that share the load, so one failure reduces capacity instead of removing it.
- Two evaporators in critical rooms.
- Spare fan motors, contactors and a controller on site.
- Backup power for refrigeration and controls.
- Phase and voltage protection relays for the compressors.
- Condensing equipment selected for 46 to 50 °C ambient and 60 Hz power.
- A written plan that says where product goes if a room fails.
Records auditors ask for
Customers, certification auditors and authorities all ask for evidence. Keep these records for every cold area:
- Continuous temperature logs for each room.
- Alarm history with the action taken.
- Batch records for blast chilling and freezing: start time, start temperature, end time and core temperature.
- Yearly calibration records for probes and data loggers.
- Maintenance reports from each technician visit.
- Cleaning records for rooms, drains and evaporators.
- Handover documents: design conditions, drawings and commissioning tests.
Check the applicable SFDA requirements and your own HACCP plan for the limits and retention periods. See also our guide to cold room temperature monitoring.
Food factory cold storage FAQ
What temperature should a food processing room run at?
Meat cutting and processing rooms commonly run at +10 to +12 °C. The right figure depends on your product, the time it spends in the room and your food safety plan. Confirm it against the applicable SFDA requirements.
Can raw materials and finished products share one cold room?
No. Shared storage is the shortest route to cross-contamination and auditors look for it. Use separate rooms with separate doors and never share trolleys between them.
Do all factory cold rooms need stainless steel panels?
No. Stainless steel earns its place in wet processing rooms and wherever staff use strong cleaning chemicals. Storage rooms for packed goods work well with pre-painted galvanized steel. Decide room by room.
Should a factory use one central refrigeration plant or separate units?
Both work. A central plant with several compressors has standby capacity built in and one place to maintain. Separate systems keep a fault in one room and suit growth in phases. Large industrial plants often use CO2 or ammonia as the refrigerant. The choice depends on plant size, budget and how long production can afford to stop.
From layout to handover with Cooliva
Cooliva, a Riyadh contractor for cold rooms and freezer rooms, serves industrial sites, meat, poultry and seafood suppliers and dairy and beverage businesses. For factories this covers chiller and freezer stores, blast freezers and chillers and industrial big storage rooms. A project runs from requirement discussion and site review through solution planning, supply and installation to testing and handover. If you want one contractor for the whole package, ask about our turnkey cold room projects. Send your product list and production figures through the contact page or call +966 59 799 1000.
