Fonterra Cold Store, Hamilton NZ

The world’s largest exporter of dairy products leads at innovation technology and Fonterra’s cool stores at their depot in Hamilton, New Zealand is no exception. As New Zealand's largest private sector investor in research and development, Fonterra’s commitment to innovation - from the farm to the factory - underpins the company vision to lead in dairy, and to ensure the sustainability of the New Zealand dairy industry. This state of the art cool store built in Winter/Spring 2009 is spread over a considerable area: 250m long by 90m wide. The development was worth approximately NZ$250m.

Fonterra sought a solution to ensure the robustness and longevity of their cool stores, and wanted a system to ensure that the flooring could withstand the low temperatures required for dairy stores. Enter REHAU, with its ‘Value Creation Selling’ approach. In the early design process with the installer, Sean Stephens of Plumbcraft, based in Auckland was able to approach the main contractors Haydn and Rollett Construction (Auckland) with their considerable experience of underfloor heating systems under its belt and with an extended REHAU team (most notably Franz Huelle, CTL ANZ) over its shoulder. Plumbcraft and the REHAU team worked hard during the design process, Misha Basta of Fusion HVAC, who was the mechanical engineer involved complimented a formidable team to find an optimal solution for this ‘Design and Build’ - from the boiler room to the underfloor system.

Fonterra’s first REHAU underfloor system boasts 276m of RAUTHERMEX (63mm) - the uniqueness of its pre-insulated pipe advantageous for this system; and 25,000m of RAUTITAN pink (20mm). An additional energy saving design was incorporated, using the off-waste energy from boiler condensers. Fonterra takes design seriously, not least because the cool store will contain NZ$250m of butter and cheese. It was crucial to build a system that will work for today and for tomorrow.

The point of difference for this project was the ability of REHAU and Plumbcraft to offer very detailed design, while offering considerable back-up and support at each point in the construction chain, and hence was able to add value to the various contractors and sub contractors.