Transgourmet Köln (D)

Sustainable food logistics

Transgourmet opens a new environmental-friendly logistic centre. With the new distribution centre in Köln (Germany), the food-wholesaler continues to strengthen its sustainable refrigeration expertise. After the logistic centre in Hamburg, which has started operation last year, Transgourmet has now set another milestone in Köln.
The 30‘000m2 distribution centre in the city‘s industrial zone Köln Langel is Transgourmet’s hub for all cash and carry markets in the German region Nordrhein-Westfahlen. Every Transgourmet POS (in addition to customers from the catering and hotel business) in the south of Düsseldorf is being supplied completely by the new logistic centre. The logistic centre, which covers an area of four soccer fields, has been designed to the latest refrigeration standards.

Energy is being produced and used on site

Refrigeration and AC is supplied with a CO2 all-in-one refrigeration installation with parallel compression and ejector technology. Together with outdoors evaporators, the installation’s waste heat allows heating for the entire building, which enables a complete green heating without using fossil fuels. Like this, energy consumption compared to the old distribution centre was cut down by a third (benchmarking CO2 vs. R404A installation). 10‘000m2 for medium temperature products, such as milk, yoghurt, etc. and 7‘000m2 for frozen goods are being chilled with the natural refrigerant CO2. The installation’s refrigeration capacity is 1‘500kW for medium temperature, 400kW for AC and 810 kW for low temperature. With the current design, the system has the possibility, to expand the frozen goods area by 2‘500m2 and to increase low temperature’s refrigeration capacity to 1‘100kW in total. 12‘500 articles can be stored in the logistic centre.

A GIGANTIC STOCK TURNOVER

Over a hundred trucks deliver fresh goods every day to round about ten sites in the region of Nordrhein-Westfahlen. In return, the warehouse is being stocked with new goods. Every day 400 tons of products are being handled through the distribution centre. The logistic centre is one of 14 in Germany, which are all part of Transgourmet Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Refrigeration system‘s construction period ended after ten months. In September 2018 there was the kick-off meeting and after a partial hand-over of frozen storage, incoming goods area and medium temperature storage, staff could move to their new offices in August 2019.

Transgourmet group is following its consistent way to the company target, to become CO2 neutral until 2023. With this innovative refrigeration installation, the company saves spendings on heating and AC. Different temperature requirements from operational side can be covered through one single installation working with the natural refrigerant CO2, which don’t burdens our environment (CO2 = GWP 1), with a higher efficiency (energy savings of 30% compared to the ancient storage) and with the renunciation to fossil fuels (no more conventional heating).