Cold storage and food plant cable in Lancaster.

Washdown areas are wet locations in the literal sense. Cable there is specified for wet duty, and the giveaway is the jacket print: XHHW-2, USE-2 or a portable cord with a thermoset jacket. A construction that is only rated for dry locations should not have been installed in that room, and if it was, its condition is the first thing to establish before anything is moved.

Freezers are dry but cold, and cold changes how a jacket behaves. Cable that has spent years at low temperature becomes stiff, and flexing it during removal can crack insulation that was sound in service. Coil it warm, handle it gently, and photograph any cracking rather than snap it straight to see whether it breaks.

Hose-down also drives water into cut ends. A coil with open ends that has been standing in a wet room will have moisture in the conductor strands, and that is a condition fact a buyer needs before the cable is moved rather than after it has been loaded and shipped.

A food plant runs on control and instrumentation cable. Temperature probes, level sensors, valve actuators and drive signals all travel on shielded pairs and multi-conductor control cable, and a line changeover leaves lengths of both in the rack. Numbered cores and drain wires survive better than most people expect after a decade in a wet room.

Tray cable carries the power side above the plant floor, often in stainless tray that is itself being replaced. When a line is decommissioned, the tray cable comes out in long runs that are worth keeping intact, because a 150 ft length with the print legible is a useful item and the same cable in five pieces is not.

Instrumentation cable is the easiest to spoil and the easiest to identify. Twisted shielded pairs, a drain wire and a voltage class lower than the power cable beside it. Keep the pairs together and do not strip the shield to check the conductor, because the check costs more than the certainty is worth.

• Wet-rated power cable — XHHW-2 or USE-2, jacket print and cut ends.
• Tray cable — conductor count, print, length of the longest run.
• Control cable — pair count, numbering, shield and drain.
• Instrumentation — twisted pairs, shield, any water in the bundle.

Food plants change owners and lines more often than the buildings change. A new operator brings its own standards, and the spares rack from the previous one is cleared as part of the transition. That overstock is often the cleanest material on the site: cartoned, tagged and bought for a specification that no longer applies to anything in the building.

Warehouse space around the plant holds the rest, including packaging lines, pallet conveyors and the electrical spares that kept them running. Those lots are mixed and small, but they combine well with the plant material on a single visit, and sending them as one list with two sections is clearer than two separate inquiries.

Plant access usually means a hygiene induction, a change of clothing and a fixed route through the building. Say so at the start and the collection is planned around the plant's own rules rather than against them.