/ News / By Beuschel Sales, Inc.
Have you ever wondered how you can still find beautiful looking apples at the grocery store in the spring when apples are harvested in the fall? Maintaining the freshness of fruit produce like apples or blueberries depends on the conditions in which they are stored and how cool they are kept. The right dock doors are a big part of that process.
Apples need to be kept dry to store well. At room temperature, apples will last about 5 to 7 days. Beyond that they begin to degrade in quality and nutritional content. They begin to lose their flavor and freshness and either shrivel or get mushy. Once that happens, most people would rather toss them than eat them.
In the refrigerator apples will last about a month or two if they are properly stored. Keeping them in plastic will extend their shelf life. This does not explain how great looking apples are still available months after they are picked, however. Fruit growers must create a specific environment if they want them to last in cold storage 6 months or more. This requires both high humidity and a consistent temperature of between 30 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Farmers are finding that to maintain these conditions and their fruit, they must replace the conventional doors in their storage facilities with high speed doors.
Why high speed doors?
The older slow sectional doors or rolling-steel doors are incapable of doing the job of maintaining specified humidity or temperature. They are too slow and their seals are not tight enough, and, as a result, these conventional dock doors let in too much warmth, cold, wet or dry air. Fruit can spoil quickly when the environment is too damp or not damp enough, and the weather in Michigan is rarely consistent. High speed doors keep the inside from the outside by minimizing how much time the warehouse or storage facility is exposed to the elements.
High speed doors are energy efficient, but they are also much lower maintenance. Conventional doors break down during the winter because the doors aren’t built to withstand the temperature differential between the inside and the outside. High speed door have fewer moving parts to repair or replace.
For companies that do not have a product so sensitive to temperature or humidity differences, high speed doors are still an excellent investment. They last longer, have to be repaired less, keep the warm or cool air inside (lowering heating or cooling costs and protecting employee health and comfort), and allow access to the outside quickly and without a lot of effort.
For both Michigan farmers looking for a better storage solution and business owners who do not want endless repair bills or pests in the warehouse, high speed doors offer the best solution to a variety of problems. Beuschel Sales offers a number of options for different door products, and we would be happy to discuss which ones would work best for your need. Call us today to set up an appointment.
