Case Study — Cold Chain
Case Study: Passing an Unannounced Audit at a Horsley Drive Cold Store
A chilled and frozen food distribution business operating a 5,500 square metre facility on The Horsley Drive in Horsley Park NSW 2175 contacted us in early 2026 with a deadline rather than a preference. An unannounced customer audit had returned three findings and given them eight weeks to close them out. Pro Clean Corp was already servicing Horsley Park 2175 and surrounds, so a crew walked the site within two days. The operator is anonymised at their request.
Three findings, one root cause
The findings were incomplete cleaning records, residue and condensate build-up around the chiller door thresholds, and no documented chemical register for the repack room. On the surface they looked unrelated. They were not. The site had been serviced by a general commercial cleaner engaged years earlier for an office and amenities scope, and the cold chain areas had simply been added over time without anyone rewriting the schedule or the paperwork to match.
The thresholds were the clearest symptom. Every door cycle between a chilled zone and the dispatch dock drops condensate onto the floor, and traffic then works it into a film that no amount of general mopping removes. Nobody had ever specified a treatment for it, so nobody did one.
The rebuild
- Rewrote the entire schedule by zone and risk rather than by room, mapping every task to the area it protects
- Ran a one-off deep clean and threshold remediation ahead of the ongoing contract, fixed-quoted as a project
- Introduced a daily threshold routine at each chiller and freezer door — squeegee, low-residue clean, dry pass
- Scheduled cold zone cleaning around defrost windows with cold-work PPE and 20 minute rotation limits
- Set up a chemical register with safety data sheets held on site and dilution charts posted at the station
- Moved to signed and dated task logs at completion, with photo evidence for every periodic task
- Added drain and channel treatment in the repack room to a documented monthly cycle
Why the records mattered as much as the cleaning
The facility had probably been cleaning adequately in several of the flagged areas. It could not prove it. In cold chain and food distribution the cleaning record is part of the product record, and an auditor who cannot see a dated log has to assume the task did not happen. Rebuilding the documentation was therefore half the project, and it is now maintained continuously rather than assembled in a panic. The same discipline is applied on our factory cleaning and distribution centre cleaning programs.
The outcome
All three findings were closed at the follow-up audit inside the eight week deadline, with the auditor noting the threshold routine and the completeness of the dated logs. Internal complaints about wet floors at the dock transition dropped to zero over the following quarter. The program prices into our compliance tier as described on the rates page, with worked examples on the cost guide. Related work is documented in our M7 corridor distribution centre case study, and the heavier plant scopes on our industrial cleaning page.
Case study FAQs
What sort of facility was this?
A chilled and frozen food distribution facility of about 5,500 square metres on The Horsley Drive in Horsley Park 2175, with three temperature zones, a dispatch dock, a small production and repack room, and amenities for around 60 staff across two shifts.
What triggered the change?
An unannounced customer audit returned three findings: incomplete cleaning records, condensate and residue build-up at the chiller door thresholds, and no documented chemical register for the repack room. The operator had eight weeks to close them out.
How do you clean a chilled area properly?
With low-residue product rated for the temperature, applied around defrost windows so surfaces are workable, and with crews issued cold-work PPE on a rotation limit. Cleaning a cold room in twenty minute blocks produces a better result than one long shift where nobody wants to be there.
What was done about the records?
The whole schedule was rewritten by zone and risk, each task signed and dated at completion, periodic works photographed, and the chemical register with safety data sheets set up on site. The pack was assembled continuously rather than reconstructed before an audit.
Were the findings closed out?
All three were closed at the follow-up audit inside the eight week window. The auditor specifically noted the threshold treatment routine and the completeness of the dated logs.
What did the program cost?
It priced into our compliance tier, with the deep clean and threshold remediation fixed-quoted as a one-off project ahead of the ongoing contract. Monthly spend rose materially against the previous arrangement, which had been a general cleaner with no cold-chain scope at all.
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