Cycleworld serves the the cold chain industry, from food to Covid-19 vaccine storage
AT the frozen food section of the supermarket you can find an array of foods such as tempura prawns, fish balls, chapati and many others.
Do you ever wonder if the freshness of the foods is maintained throughout the supply chain, and there is no break in the chain when it comes to keeping the items frozen?
This is where Cycleworld comes in.
With some 28 years of serving the cold chain industry, Cycleworld Corporation Sdn Bhd builds cold rooms to ensure food supplies are kept fresh and frozen.
Born and bred in Malaysia, Cycleworld has been a building material provider to the cold chain industry since 1993, serving the food and beverage, cosmetics and logistics industries, and recently, the medical and pharmaceutical industry for Covid-19 vaccine storage.
Cycleworld has a factory on a 2ha-site in Klang that manufactures sandwich panels for the Malaysian market and also exports some 50% of its product to Asean countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar and Cambodia, to name a few.
A manufacturer of insulated sandwich panels – a structure made of three layers including a low-density core and a thin skin-layer bonded to each side – Cycleworld acquires raw material in the forms of chemicals for the production of its polyurethane (PUR) rigid foam and polyisocyanurate (PIR) rigid foam.
Cycleworld ‘s panel construction method – steel skin PUR rigid foam panels – was popular in Europe after World War II, where advances in chemical knowledge, quick-build technology together with lightweight construction methods were paramount to the post-war boom.
By the late 1950s and early 60s, building a large warehouse with insulated sandwich panels had become mainstream construction and today, almost all large industrial cold rooms are built using insulated sandwich panels.
This method is comparable to other building materials like concrete or brick for commercial purposes, except that insulated sandwich panels far exceed the properties of thermal resistance.
The insulating property of PUR is touted to be some 700% better than brick, whereby the thermal resistance (km/w) of PUR and PIR is between 0.022 and 0.028km/w whereas brick is only between 0.49 and 0.87 km/w.
Meanwhile, when the foam is being manufactured, the foam is thermally bonded on pre-painted galvanised iron (PPGI) skins, and then moulded into sizes resembling large Lego block-like panels.
This is the base when building a myriad of applications, such as industrial cold rooms, temperature-controlled warehouses, roofing, communication cabins and many others. Furthermore, this base can span across many industries.
The year 2019 was an exceptionally good year for Cycleworld.
It completed the supply of insulated panels and cold chains related products, such as Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS), to the single-largest automated cold room built in Vietnam.
The construction of the warehouse measured about 120,000cm3 of temperature-controlled space on land spanning some 7,600sqm in Ho Chi Minh City to house more than 59,000 tonnes of product.
The same year, Cycleworld unveiled its latest investment, a state-of-the-art 33m double belt that fully automated the production line which quadrupled Cycleworld’s production capacity.
This investment has been supported by the increasing demand for cold chain facilities in Malaysia and the Asean region.
Today, with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a rapid increase in e-commerce activities which propelled the rise in demand for cold chain and logistic facilities as well.
With a strong business foundation, Cycleworld has also diversified its business portfolio by producing a range of panels made from cement fibre board skins – also known as FastFix panels – instead of metal skins used for the construction of modular housing and buildings.
Its excellent thermal insulation qualities, as well as its lightweight feature, are suitable for quick builds.
This division known as Cycleworld’s Modular Division is at its infancy, but has already gained Industrialised Building System (IBS) status from the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) and has been steadily exporting FastFix panels to Australia over the past five years.
Original article (Published 8 Jun 2021, by TheStar): https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2021/06/08/keeping-foods-frozen-and-fresh