Back in 2018-19, Red Rich Fruits had outgrown its packing centre at its Yarra Valley property. In developing their brief, they wanted to maximise every aspect of their operations with a large, uninterrupted floor area that enabled forklifts, trucks and people to keep moving without pinch points.

The Entegra design team’s answer was an 80-metre clear-span with no internal columns. The building runs 128 metres long, stands 9 metres to the eaves and includes 10-metre canopies on two sides. Inside, that span provides just over 10,000 m² of open floor under one roof.

Clear-span can sound like an engineering flex, but in practice, it is a workflow tool.

The design has given Red Rich the room to install updated conveyor, grading and packing systems, plus expanded cool room storage. The business also added optical and imaging systems that check fruit internally before sorting apples and pears into grades.

Red Rich director Michael Napoleone said, “The shed helped us double the volume of apples and pears graded, packed and marketed to about 400 tonnes per week.” The key point is not only volume. It is doing it in less time, with fewer workarounds. 

Cold chain was treated as part of the layout. Multiple coolstore zones support a simple flow from receival to holding through to packing and dispatch, with fewer touches and less warm exposure.