Located in Melbourne’s West, the NewCold Advanced Cold Logistics 2 – Cold Store Facility pushes the boundaries of traditional warehouse design and construction, as one of the largest automated high bays in the world. Standing at 37 metres tall, this fully automated facility is a one stop shop with ambient, chilled and frozen capabilities, setting new service standards in food storage.

This 12 storey equivalent structure required the largest available boom lifts in Australia for safe construction. To withstand strong winds at 37 metres, almost $1 million worth of steel propping was used until the structure was self supporting. Enormous roof trusses two metres deep, spanning 22 metres in both directions were preassembled to reinforce the structure while construction progressed.

One of the largest automated high bays in the world, quality and safety were critical to success of the project.

Every element of this 18,000m2 automated facility demonstrated complexity at scale. The team harnessed in house technological capabilities to achieve a precise, detailed design. Identifying coordination and constructability issues in the virtual space avoided costly rework in the ‘real world’. Precise planning was required for a perfectly level slab – providing a secure base, as any movement would translate to the intricate network of material handling machinery, interfering with the smooth operation of the entire facility.