Distribution
Ice cold frame
A £10M, 5,667m2 cold storage facility
for national logistics provider
Yearsley Logistics is being built at
the Great Haddon Employment
Zone near Peterborough.
The project forms the initial part of a £65M
development of a 20-acre site, known as
“SuperHub South”.
The large steel-framed depot will become
the UK’s largest single site temperature
controlled facility and will create more
than 300 new jobs. The first phase is set
for completion in September, when the
temperature will be pulled down to minus
25 degrees and the depot will immediately
become operational. Subsequent phases will
follow over the next few years.
The investment will create the latest
in a series of superhubs across the UK,
part of Yearsley Logistics’ strategic plan to
minimise food miles and increase operational
efficiency on behalf of its customers; food
manufacturers, retailers and catering
providers nationally.
SuperHub South will serve the south of
England and the major shipping ports with an
eventual 150,000 pallet capacity.
Working on behalf of main contractor
Russells Construction, the project’s steelwork
has been fabricated, supplied and erected by
BD Structures. The main cold store measures
65m × 65m and a series of Westok cellular
rafters have been used to create the columnfree
spaces needed for the facility.
The cellular rafters are 32.5m-long ×
1,434mm-deep with 1,100mm diameter
openings. They are supported on 20m-high
perimeter columns spaced at 6.5m intervals
and by one line of internal columns, thereby
creating two large open-plan areas.
Kloeckner Westok Technical Advisory
Engineer Walter Swann says: “Our
involvement initially involved looking closely
at the performance requirements for the
rafters. The roof has a very shallow pitch at
one degree, and to ensure that it drained
adequately an imposed load deflection limit of
50mm was specified by the engineer (a span/
depth limit of 650 for a 32m span).
“By choosing more appropriate cell data it
was possible to massage the beam depth up,
and reduce the weight of the beam by 20%,
yet still maintain the very strict deflection
criteria.”
Kloeckner Westok and BD Structures
worked together to determine a splice
position to suit the available bar lengths.
With the splice position fixed, the
connection was designed and detailed to
ensure that the centre of force in each of the
tee’s was aligned with the centroid of the bolts.
A steel frame has proven to be the
only viable solution for a cold storage
facility near Peterborough.
12 NSC
June 18
Model showing the
65m x 65m main
store and its attached
facilities
/Braced_frames
/Fabrication
/Construction#Steel_erection
/Steel_construction_products#Cellular_beams
/Moment_resisting_connections
/Braced_frames
/Fabrication
/Construction#Steel_erection
/Steel_construction_products#Cellular_beams
/Moment_resisting_connections