Greenfield Food Distribution Facility

ESI Group USA was selected to design and build a 395,000- square-foot Greenfield Food Distribution Center and regional headquarters for Ben E. Keith Foods with future expansion of up to one million square feet. The facility features an Ammonia Hybrid Central Refrigeration System, shrinkage compensating industrial floors with trap rock, pre-cast concrete walls at the dock areas with insulated metal panel walls at the warehouse areas, and LED lighting throughout the entire facility. The operations and administrative offices’ HVAC system will use a variable refrigerant flow system with heat recovery. This caliber of a project requires a highly-skilled labor force, which during these times has presented a smaller amount of subcontractors from which to choose. The high-efficiency systems associated with the central ammonia refrigeration, HVAC, and multi-shuttle automated storage and retrieval systems relied on cutting-edge technology and software systems. The existing site conditions were not ideal, and with the building size and amount of projected traffic, soil compaction for long-term stability was crucial.