What this site is
coldstorageinstallers.co.uk is an independent information site published by SEO Dons Ltd, an advertising agency (Company No. 16766013, 71-75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ). It is not an installer and does not survey, size, design, build, commission or quote for anything. The site explains cold rooms, blast freezers, refrigerated warehousing, modular and controlled-atmosphere storage for UK food producers, distributors, third-party logistics operators, pharmaceutical sites and top-fruit growers. If you send the enquiry form, we reply by email. SEO Dons Ltd has not vetted any installer, so check credentials yourself using the list below.
How a cold store should be sized
On a well-run project every store starts with the refrigeration duty — the kilowatts of cooling needed to pull product down and hold it at temperature — calculated from your throughput, product, half-hourly meter data and site constraints, not read off a size chart. A good installer designs the insulated PIR envelope to Part L, sizes the plant to N+1 so a single compressor failure cannot lose the stock, and selects a refrigerant that survives the F-gas phase-down: CO2 (R744) transcritical for most chilled and frozen duties, R290 for smaller packaged plant, and ammonia (R717) for the largest industrial stores. A good installer is honest about limits — if a repair beats a replacement, or a smaller store meets the brief, they should say so.
Audit-ready from handover
For food-grade work the install is only half the job; the store has to prove it holds temperature. A good installer commissions the store with validated temperature mapping, calibrated probes and alarms, so the store is auditable for HACCP and BRCGS from day one, and sets up F-gas leak checking and record-keeping on handover. HACCP-critical steps such as blast-freeze pull-down are validated with recorded times and core temperatures.
How to check an installer's credentials
When you assess an installer, the credentials worth checking are F-gas company certification (REFCOM registered) — a legal requirement to work the refrigerant circuit — Institute of Refrigeration membership, FETA / British Refrigeration Association affiliation, ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001, and CHAS or SafeContractor for site health and safety. MCS, NICEIC and RECC are solar and electrical marks and are not the relevant accreditations for cold storage; plenty of sites blur the line. This site holds none of these credentials; each one an installer claims can be checked against the issuing body.
Running cost: the four levers
Refrigeration is the largest single cost on most cold-chain sites, so it pays to put real numbers on it, starting with the four levers that move it: efficient plant, a tight envelope, door and infiltration control, and offsetting the 24/7 load with on-site solar — which should be quoted separately. This site is operated by SEO Dons Ltd (Company No. 16766013), which does not install, survey or quote for cold storage. When you send an enquiry through the form, we reply by email.