Our Cold Store Legend for the month of November is Sunil Inarmal, Manager of Congella Cold Store in Durban who, in his two and a half decades in the cold storage industry, has seen cold stores upgraded and another almost burnt to the ground.
At 54, Sunil Inarmal has been active in Durban’s cold store industry for 25 years. He started as a temporary checker at the Maydon Wharf cold store in 1992 and progressed to cold room supervisor. Moving to Bayhead cold storage he became senior supervisor and assistant to the cold store manager. In November 2009 he joined the Chester Group in opening Congella Cold Store, as a cold store manager he oversaw an upgrade of freezer rooms, including the installation of Storax mobile racking and pallet conveyors.
His worst experience was battling a fire at Bayhead cold storage.
The freezer rooms ended up with six inches of water after the fire was extinguished on the third day. The defrosted product had to be dumped and the smell was awful. The fire was contained by the heroic actions of the Durban fire brigade who climbed onto the cold room ceilings and cut the insulated panels, preventing the fire from spreading.
Sunil has worked with 5 different warehouse management systems including SAP, Data Point, Accellos, Nevision and Macro 2000. Congella, which uses Data Point, can move up to 1500 pallets a week into and out of the freezers using the data Point system. Congella cold store assists customers around the clock, 24 hours a day, 5 days a week.
Sunil lives in Newlands where his wife works as PA to the MD of a manufacturing company. His daughter is a third year student at the University of KwaZulu Natal studying applied Chemistry. He attributes his good health to working at minus 25 as bacteria cannot survive at these temperatures and his greatest wish is to build and manage a new cold store in the Durban area.
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