High-volume cold storage in Calgary asks a lot of both the building and the people inside it. Product must stay inside its temperature range through every receiving, put-away, pick and dispatch cycle, while crews work in conditions that Alberta winters make harder at the dock doors and in the yard.
The operations that run well tend to share a handful of habits, and most of them come down to planning the work around people as carefully as around product.
Read below to learn more.
Alberta's occupational health and safety legislation does not specifically address working in cold weather, but employers still have a general duty under section 3(1) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act to take reasonable care to protect the health and safety of workers. In practice, that duty is met by identifying where cold exposure happens and writing down how it is controlled. The Government of Alberta advises employers to review their hazard assessment before winter to pick up seasonal hazards, which matters in a facility where one person may move from a heated office to a freezer aisle to an open dock door within a single shift.
The hierarchy of controls is a useful frame for cold stress. Engineering controls change the workspace, administrative controls change how the work is done, and personal protective equipment covers what remains. Practical examples include supplying a heater or heated shelter for breaks, shielding workers from drafts and wind, allowing extra breaks when needed, educating workers on cold hazards and the controls in place, and using a buddy system so no one is alone in extreme cold conditions.
Workers and supervisors should also know the early warning signs of cold stress, which include feeling cold and shivering, trouble moving fingers, hands and toes, loss of feeling or tingling, and frost nip, a mild form of frostbite where the top layer of exposed skin freezes.
Susceptibility to cold injury varies from person to person, and age, medical conditions, general health and fitness level can all play a part. The University of Alberta's cold stress program, which is adapted from Alberta's best practice guidance on working in heat and cold, recommends acclimatization over one to three weeks to get employees used to working in the cold.
For a high-volume site that regularly onboards new or seasonal associates, that points toward phasing in time in the coldest zones instead of assigning a new hire to the freezer on day one. Rotating tasks across a shift also helps keep any one person from carrying the heaviest exposure.
For food moving through a cold storage facility, the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations set the framework. Businesses covered by the regulations must meet food safety requirements that include receiving, storage and transportation, and many must maintain a written preventive control plan consistent with HACCP principles. Traceability is built around the ability to track food one step backward and one step forward in the supply chain. Which requirements apply to a given operation depends on its activities, so the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's interactive tools are the right place to confirm them.
On the warehouse floor, this means implementing disciplined receiving checks, clear zone labelling, consistent lot capture at put-away, and a rotation method such as first-expired, first-out wherever shelf life drives the pick logic. Each of those habits makes a trace or recall faster to run if one is ever needed.
Cold storage hazards reach beyond temperature. Cold environments can bring slips and falls alongside cold stress injuries such as hypothermia and frostbite. Food processing and warehouse personnel in refrigerated or freezer environments, as well as dock staff loading freight in unheated bays, are commonly exposed.
A few workflow choices can reduce that exposure without slowing throughput. Batching picks by temperature zone means crews make fewer trips between warm and cold areas, keeping door transitions clear and dry reduces slip risk, and agreeing on a pre-shift inspection routine for floors and powered equipment catches problems before they reach the aisle.
A cold storage site depends on a workforce that is trained, rested and matched to the work. Structured approaches that cover attracting, assessing, onboarding, performance and improvement give site leaders a consistent way to bring people into cold environments safely and keep them there.
Eclipse Advantage supports warehouse, distribution, and food manufacturing operations across Canada. If your site is planning workforce coverage for the colder months, our team will be glad to talk through what has worked for operations like yours.