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Able Freight adds precooling to their Honolulu facility
Able Freight is one of North America's most powerful perishable logistics providers, with more than 20 years of experience and cold storage warehouses in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Central Mexico and Hawaii.
The company continually sets the pace in the industry, CFO Jim Pope recognized a need for precooling and recooling at the company's Honolulu facility. Mr Pope had two requirements in a new precooler – power and portability. “We get fresh produce off planes and trucks that needs to be cooled in a hurry,” said Pope. “And we didn't have a space in Honolulu to designate a whole separate room for precooling.”
Kapu Kiyuna, Able Freight's station manager in Honolulu, said coolers at the airport have to accommodate a wide variety of different products. Therefore they're usually kept between 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit – which is too high a to maintain the cold chain for perishables like berries and mushrooms stored at Able Freight. For that reason company prefers not to leave cargo at the airport and picks it up themselves. Kapu Kiyuna emphasizes: “Time is very important in perishables. The quicker you can cool it down the longer it's going to last. The longer you keep [produce] in a refrigerated environment, the longer the product is going to last and the better it's going to taste.”
Based on a recommendation from one of Able Freight's customers, Mr Pope reached out to Global Cooling Inc., the Philadelphia-based manufacturer of the Jet-Ready Precooler. Built with two 10-horsepower motors supplying the power to two specially designed fans, the forced air cooling tunnel moves twice as much as air as the standard farm-built unit. After discussions with Global Cooling's President, Jim Still, Mr Pope had a Jet Precooler ordered to Honolulu in January.
Kiyuna said the precooler was set up in the facility's refrigerated warehouse, where the temperature usually sits at about 33-35 degrees Fahrenheit. They leave pallets of produce in front of the precooler for a few hours before repacking it and sending the cargo off to customers on the neighboring Hawaiian islands. “A lot of our customers want to make sure that the produce stays in the cold chain,” Kiyuna said. “It's an added feature that we can sell to our customers.”
The Jet Precooler can also easily be moved around the facility with a forklift. Kiyuna said electrical outlets were installed all around the warehouse so the precooler could be used almost anywhere. “It's so convenient, as depending on how much product we have holding in our warehouse, we can set it up pretty much anywhere in our refrigerated warehouse.” Able Freight also recently opened another cold storage facility in Kona – Hawaii's main island. Kiyuna said that Able Freight has the only refrigeration unit at Kona's main airport, but would like to see the precooling facility expand even further in the future.
For more information:
Jim Still
Global Cooling Inc.
Tel: +1-844-858-4621
Solutions@Pre-Coolers.net
