As Britain's leading food retailers, it is critical to Tesco that their storage and distribution facilities are among the most efficient in the country. Serving 586 stores throughout Britain, from 19 distribution centres - and maintaining a consistently high level of service and product quality - is a complex and demanding business. A typical distribution centre covers a ground area of 300,000ft² and handles some 50 million units a year, working around the clock, twenty-four hours a day. Frozen foods in particular make special demands on the distribution process and a major new centre dedicated to this product group is currently under construction at Crick, near Daventry.

Completed in 2001, the new building comprises a 210,000m³ high bay, storage and bulk-breaking facility. At the heart of any cold-store performance is the insulation material and the specialist sub-contractor on the project, O' Turner Insulation Limited, are widely experienced in this sector and have developed a sound reputation for their knowledge and expertise in all aspects of cold store, blast freezer and chill store construction. Their preferred material is STYROFOAM™, the blue rigid, extruded polystyrene insulation board from Dow.

Two grades of STYROFOAM were specified for this project. In the roof, 4000m³ of ROOFMATE™ RL-X, which is particularly suited to modern, long-span, lightweight applications, is being used in two 90mm layers. The floor area, a further 3345m³ is also made up of two layers, but this time of 75mm STYROFOAM SP-X.

Director of O' Turner Insulation, Darren O' Turner, commented: 'we use Dow products frequently and SP grade STYROFOAM is invariably used in the floor of any cold store that we construct. The whole range has exceptional moisture resistance, high compressive strength and low thermal conductivity; characteristics that it retains over the long term, even in extreme conditions. This makes it pretty much an automatic choice for us.'