What are examples of industrial buildings? This article looks at the types of industrial real estate including industrial buildings, warehouses and storage buildings.

Types of Industrial Buildings

There are plenty of industrial building types to research, whether you are looking to construct or invest. We have listed seven different industrial buildings, but there are many more niche types we have not covered in this article.

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Heavy Industrial Buildings

Heavy industrial buildings are large scale and can include large storehouses for keeping raw materials and finished goods.

These industrial building facilities are typically used by companies that manufacture automobiles, cement, and steel. Inside the expanse of the building could have cranes, high-capacity exhaust systems, enormous blast furnaces, pressured air and water lines, and storage tanks.

Since these buildings are built and constructed to exact measurements for accommodating the prementioned features, they rarely find alternative uses. That rare chance is the reason why heavy industrial buildings aren't used for anything other than their intended purpose.

Warehouses

These industrial buildings primarily store goods on behalf of other companies. They are of great use to exporters, importers, manufacturers, wholesale businesspeople, and people involved in the transport business.

Warehouses are built in different sizes depending on what will be stored within. They are visually substantial in size and usually located outside of the city. Their prime location is planned so that goods can be unloaded directly from ports, airports, or railway stations via cranes.

Depending on the size of the company and money available, a warehouse can have more than one storey and loading dock. They are used by multiple sectors that require storage for raw and packed materials, such as agriculture, food and beverages, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Telecom Centres or Data Hosting Centres

These types of industrial buildings accommodate data centres and telecommunication and are increasingly growing in size in the country due to dependency and advances in technology.

Telecom centres and data hosting centres are facilities with large computers and servers that rely on large power lines to power them. That's why they are typically located within proximity to large communication trunk lines.

Cold Storage Buildings

For long periods, these industrial buildings will keep masses of food products in a refrigerated condition until needed. Cold storage buildings are built to retain food without it going off. It does this by using a lot of electricity to fuel its refrigerators. That is why they are located where there is a significant supply of electricity.

Internally, you can expect to be cold to help with keeping the enormous refrigerator units at the right temperature. The temperature is shown throughout the building via thermometers on the ceiling and walls.

Light Manufacturing Buildings

Light manufacturing buildings are used in assembling light machinery, such as gadgets, fans, and water pumps, as well as in food processing. Compared with the above industrial buildings, light manufacturing buildings are generally smaller in size and do not have high-capacity exhaust systems and blast furnaces.

There are a lot more alternative uses for light manufacturing buildings, such as converting a machine that makes water pump units into a machine that assembles gadgets by changing how the installed machinery works.

Research and Development Set Up

This type of industrial building forms an integral part of many businesses and can be tailored to cater to a business's specific requirements.

Many of these research and development setups are owned by life sciences companies, which add residential elements into such buildings because they are not commonly located in city centres, but in rural areas. Being housed in the same building they will work in allows scientists and other staff to get more research and work done.

Research and development centres also have office elements, which are run along with the rest of the centre on rent with long leasing periods.

Flex Buildings

Flex buildings are the newest category of industrial buildings. As a result of the developing needs of modern society, these flex buildings have more than one use; accommodating research and development facilities, office setups, showroom spaces, and light manufacturing.

As the name suggests, flex buildings are flexible and can be modified to suit the needs and requirements of most cross-sector companies.

What is Industrial Real Estate?

Industrial real estate is any building that is used for processing, storing, manufacturing, or shipping goods. They offer great space for a business if offices or retail spaces don't quite fit the bill.

There are, as we have discussed in the above sections, multiple types of industrial buildings. The three categories of industrial buildings are allocated to distribution, manufacturing, and storage. However, depending on the needs of the inhabiting business, the industrial building may need to function as more than one of these types.

Manufacturing Buildings

The two types of manufacturing buildings are heavy manufacturing and light assembly. Industrial buildings where manufacturing takes place are where goods and produced and assembled. Less than 20% of these buildings are defined as office spaces. They have multiple loading docks for several trucks to unload and load goods and clear heights of 10 feet at least.

Storage and Distribution Buildings

Storage and distribution buildings are where products are collected, stored, and shipped to their respective end users. We group these two because they share many similarities in terms of structure and size. Both types have been built as one-storey buildings with concrete truck courts, high ceilings, and multiple loading docks.

There are three different groups of storage and distribution buildings: Distribution warehouses, general warehouses, and truck terminals. The sizes of storage and distribution buildings vary, featuring less than 20% office space, with the remaining 80% being storage space.

General Warehouses

General warehouses are where goods are stored once they are assembled in a manufacturing building. How the general warehouses are equipped changes the space and pricing of the said warehouse.

The location of these warehouses isn't an important factor because goods are stored for a long time and don't need to be moved in and out of the warehouse often. For the same reason, the door-to-square footage ratio is also unimportant.

Distribution Warehouses

A distribution warehouse is primarily used to ship goods, meaning that the warehouse's location is a vital component of the business model. As a result, these properties tend to be located close to main transportation lines and airports. Being close to such transportation connections allows a business to fulfil their orders quickly despite how far their clients may live.

Truck Terminals

These building types have the least amount of storage space because they serve as locations where trucks move goods to another. Because these sites are devoted to transportation and exchange, the features of the site contribute to smoother transitions and distribution.

They usually consist of the main office building in charge of keeping records of the distribution of goods from the trucks, a drop lot for trailers, repair shops, and truck wash facilities.