Refrin SA introduced Storax mobile racking in Argentina during 1993, being the pioneers of mobile racking kind of system in all South America. We did 35 installations of mobile racking in 4 countries: Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil, with more than 50.000 pallets-positions.
Fruticola Olmué, a major fruit processing plant located in Chillan, in central Chile, process, freeze and exports all kinds of fruit and vegetables. More than 500 people work there during the growing season from October to June.
Refrin supplied the 1st Storax Racking Systems in Chile in 2007, for a freezing chamber with a capacity of 2,300 pallets.
On February 27th 2010 an earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale struck just off the coast of central Chile. It ranks as the sixth largest earthquake ever recorded. It was felt strongly in six Chilean regions from north to south, about 80 percent of the country’s population.
Over 500 people lost their lives.
Chillan was just 100 km from the epicentre. Storax racking system remained largely undamaged, because of the special anti-tip rails and bracing designed to keep the system intact and operational during seismic activity. Two freezing chambers in that area belonging to Fruticola Olmué´s competitors collapsed, both using drive in racking system.
After the tragic events, Fruiticola’s owner Max Hassler wrote to the then Managing Director of Storax, Ken Jones and to me:
“I write to you in acknowledgement of the quality of the system installed in our plant in Chillan. We had only very minor damage, a small purchase order is being made, and the system remained operational once we could get to it after the events here in Chile. We are located less than one hundred kilometres from the epicentre of this very large quake.”
Two years later, in 2009, we designed the 1st of four chambers of 86,00 x 38,00 x 13,50 m and completed with Storax our second installation in Chile with mobile racking system. The chamber has a capacity of 7,850 pallets, with 5 levells of pallets of 2,20 m high, which was totally unusual in Chile at that time.
Attached some pictures of Fruticola Olmué 2nd installation completed in 2012.
REFRIN SA
Ing Daniel Shocron – Representante oficial de STORAX RACKING SYSTEMS en America del Sur
Presidente
Argentina
TE: 54 11 4374 8669
Web site: www.refrin.com.ar
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