AFFCO Wairoa required new fit for purpose solutions for freezing, storing and retrieving boxed meat products.

Design and build contractors First Principles Constructors, engaged Stiles and Hooker for structural engineering services.

The scope included the construction of a new engine room, a blast freezer measuring 12m wide, 40m long, and 11.2m high, operating at -33°C, and a carton buffer tunnel measuring 5.7m wide, 74m long and 11.2m high.

With engine rooms requiring to be robust and to contain a heavy and noisy plant, this area was composed of raft foundations, precast concrete walls, columns and beams, and a concrete roof.

The below zero freezers are tall insulated panel enclosures, supported by an external steelwork frame. The floor slabs support heavy racks and the freezer plant are floating over insulation, anti-freeze piping and a raft slab foundation.

With the site over an hour from the nearest concrete plant, a mobile concrete plant was established on-site by the contractor, to support large foundation pours without delays from transport or supply constraints.

Although the project was designed and built during the Covid pandemic where traveling was limited and material in very short supply, it has been one of Stiles & Hooker’s most successful jobs – supporting the successful delivery of a complex and impressive building at an operational meat processing site – completed on time and within budget.