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Local cold storage company is looking to expand operations

Kyabram Cold Storage manages a diverse range of local and imported products, everything from dairy to fruit, in its Victorian facilities.

Kyabram Cold Storage has been a staple of regional Victorian for the dairy and agriculture sectors, and after continued growth, the company is looking to expand its operations. Food & Beverage Industry News reports.

Kyabram Cold Storage has been a major fixture in regional Victoria, and the Australian cold storage sector, since 1984.

Kyabram Cold Storage specialises in the management of warehousing of ambient, chilled and freezer inventories both Australian manufacturing and imported.

The company commenced initially with 16 cool rooms warehousing controlled atmosphere fresh produce for regional producers.

Today, Kyabram Cold Storage operates two sites with 60 cool rooms and capacity for 50,000 pallets / bins across the network. The main site is in Kyabram, north of Melbourne, the other in Merrigum, just southeast of Kyabram.

The company’ solutions-based culture has driven expansion throughout the previous four decades largely warehousing dairy products, cheese, butter and powders. Kyabram Cold Storage has enjoyed the benefits and drivers of growth through the expertise of its tenured staff lead by general manager Darren Gledhill.

“We have a dedicated group of 40 men and women, providing extensive levels of expertise throughout our facilities. Our people and community are our future which is testament to careers within the organisation lasting better than 20 years,” said Gledhill

The company’s expansion has been significant over the last six years with additional warehousing added for select specialty powders. Largely infant formula, frozen dairy blends, and concentrates.

“We manage and warehouse a diverse product range across horticultural and agricultural sectors and were once very dependant of dairy. Though in recent years we have differentiated our offer and provide wide ranging solutions that incorporate humidity, temperature, including blast freezing and controlled atmosphere storage, for many industries in the food, wine, confectionary, and raw materials sector,” said Fairless.

“We also value add and continue to seek out opportunities to return product types back into production through sorting, grading and repackaging.

Evidenced by its rework footprint in dairy fats, powders, frozen vegetable, fruit and retail FMCG sectors, both import and export.

Fairless also spoke about how the company navigated the COVID-19 pandemic from Victoria, which had some of the strictest lockdowns in the world.

“I feel we have managed our COVID response very well. Darren and his team were extraordinary,” he said.

“We haven’t missed a day’s work

across this last two years of intense scrutiny around COVID protocols and there has certainly been a lot of pressure put on warehousing and distribution centres we have done very well with.”

The senior team at Kyabram Cold Storage took the threat of COVID-19 seriously, sitting down to formulate a new approach to its business model as a way of protecting staff, clients / customers and maintaining business continuity.

“We have modified the way we managed our site and people coming to and from. When you consider we are servicing on average, 162 palletised combination/multicombination truck movements plus 30 export/import container movements weekly, we feel we have initiate meaningful responses to the threat COVID presented with uninterrupted outcomes based upon training, professional guidance especially heath care and dedication to seeing out successful outcomes during the pandemic,” said Fairless.

“Our approach to COVID is what helped maintain our business and keep our doors open through open and consistent communication with clients/ customers and our people, which included our communities.”

Fairless said the company’s response to recent supply chain issues was another indication of Kyabram Cold Storage’s capacity to pivot when required.

“To manage our business well during the recent supply chain interruptions, as pallet availability shortened which we had foreseen early, a non-proprietary pallet pool was introduced which has assisted our clients and business significantly,” he said.

The company already has more than 20,000 privately owned pallets in the network across wide ranging industries both within and outside of our warehousing management footprints. "This is an area where we feel further growth is likely," said Fairless.

Kyabram Cold Storage has also put a renewed emphasis in rationalising its transport imprint across its network, with consideration given to both rail and roads.

“Now our footprint specialises in fewer operators in our national network. Being close to the NSW border also means we have been able to maximise our commercial footprint with the use of A-doubles and B triples, which has certainly been a great help to us,” said Fairless.

“Equally, A-doubles have assisted our import/export programs. We do a lot of work to and from the Melbourne wharf now and we are establishing a significant footprint in regional Victoria for both exports

and international imports to and from Australia. Often you here industry suggest that regional warehousing has no place and metro consolidation is the pathway to modernisation and commercial acceptability, we have a differing view and when you consider our position to all capital cities and our network to road and rail matched to the congestion throughout metro Melbourne our position is strengthening.

“We reach consumer market’ as well or better than major distribution centres with reduced resources and down time.

“We continue to innovate to help our warehouse utilisation and we are

“We do have other clients outside of dairy, the wine industry is one, we do maturate wines, we have a significant footprint in frozen vegetable and fruit sectors, both import and export, and we certainly have a significant input into import and export across several product lines.”

providing a flexible footprint that looks to help a number of different clients.”

All these offerings from Kyabram Cold Storage align with the company’s core values, which are a commitment to excellence in customer service, a continued reputation for its warehousing capabilities, including inventory management and accuracy, and to improve its offerings through continued training of staff.”

Fairless said the company is suited to store food products at virtually any environment required, whether that be freezer, blast freezing, dry ambient, or control atmosphere storage as we have such a specialised footprint with 60 separated cool rooms of varying size.

Temperature controlled internationally recognised grading rooms also provides prospective and existing clients the opportunities to grade, sample and test products under the Food Industry Standard conditions, utilisation of this facility is often taken up by non-Kyabram Cold Storage clients / customers.

Fairless said regulatory licencing’, from the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment, Australian Certified Organic Certificate of Compliance, Certificate of Export Registration with the U.S Food and Drug Administration, and council certificates of registration of food premises, allows the company to provide quality assurance for their customers. F