Case Study – The COLD, HARD TRUTH:
How kalman keeps it cool in houston

A Kalman floor makes a Texas-size difference

At Versacold's public storage facility in LaPorte, Texas, the aisles are often filled with pallets of beef for export. You'll also see chicken and seafood bound to major retail and foodservice customers serving much of the South.

"We're a high volume facility and can't afford to shut down areas for maintenance,” says Tim Oros, the chief engineer for the 8.5 million cubic feet of storage of which 95 percent is kept at minus five degrees. Self-polishing Kalman Seamless Concrete® floors have helped Versacold maximize the facility’s material handling efficiency under these demanding conditions.

Above: Versacold's new loading dock allows for faster handling.

Those conditions result from double-digit freight growth at the Port of Houston—and more growth forecast due to waterway improvements and the signing of a series of free trade agreements.

"We wanted a premium floor we knew would stand up. At that point, our first Kalman floor was five years old and no maintenance had been required."

Demand is so great in the region that Versacold has twice expanded the facility, in 2001 and 2006. Originally built in 1991, it’s strategically located just one quarter mile from the Barbours Cut Container Facility.

But when expansion plans were first announce, Oros and his company’s management and design-builder, Environmental Structures, Inc., knew there would have to be changes from the original design if they were to create the most efficient facility possible and take full advantage of their location.

Redesigning from the floor up

Perhaps the biggest challenge the design team had to face was the facility’s floor.

The original floor “had saw joints every 20 feet and we had spalling on the docks and in the freezer, too,” Oros said. “That increased damage to the load wheels on our pallet jacks and forklifts.”

Joints are the number one floor problem every distribution center wants to avoid. Curled joints and broken edges not only decrease equipment speeds, they increase operator fatigue, as well.

“I could see we had higher maintenance costs with the floor that what I was used to,” said Oros, who prior to moving to Houston to join Versacold had been with Alford Refrigerated Warehouses in Dallas for 15 years.

Above: Tim Oros, Versacold's chief engineer.

“A Kalman floor was suggested by one of our corporate engineers for the 2001 expansion. We had to improve the economics in the new section of the facility.”

Oros had never worked with a Kalman floor in his career. He got a 69,500 square-foot Kalman Seamless Concrete® floor that year—and the results were everything Oros and Versacold could envision.

“I was really impressed during installation—they were like a group of workers bees. It got knocked out on time,” Oros said.

Versacold expands for the world market

By 2006, Houston’s position on the north-south axis that connects the U.S. with Mexico and Central and South America had fueled even greater demands on the port’s distribution facilities. Versacold decided it would once again expand in response.

“We wanted a premium floor we knew would stand up. At that point, our first (Kalman) floor was five years old and no maintenance had been required,” Oros said, adding that “On the original (non-Kalman) floor we have to tend to the saw joints three times a year.”

For Versacold, the maintenance on the original floor disrupts operations and repairs were difficult.

“We’re going through and making repairs and rerouting traffic,” Oros said. “In a high volume warehouse where it is hard to find an extra square foot of floor, it’s tough to take an area off for maintenance. As you know, a freezer floor is not the easiest thing to repair.”

So Oros and Versacold opted for a second Kalman Seamless Concrete® floor in 2006. It spans 86,300 square feet and was part of an expansion design-built by Primus Builders, Inc.

“No problems with it either,” Oros said.

"The choice in 2006 was easy because we already could see it paid a divident to have a Kalman floor ."

The LaPorte facility now has 36 truck door doors, a fully-refrigerated dock and four rail doors. Material handling is done by 54 double-pallet jacks and forklifts.

“The choice in 2006 was easy because we already could see it paid a dividend to have a Kalman floor,” Oros said. “It’s a floor, in our experience, that you don’t have to deal with down the road.”

But what if there is a problem?

Asked whether Kalman’s three-year warranty, the longest offered in the industry, made it easier to select Kalman, Oros paused and then said: “It’s a great warranty, I think. I haven’t had to use it.”

To read more about Kalman SC®, click here.