The chilling story behind your ice
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IDAHO FALLS – If you’ve bought a package of ice or eaten an icy treat in east Idaho, there’s a good possibility the ice came form Ball Storage and Ice.
Ball Storage is the largest ice producing factory in eastern Idaho, making anywhere from 30 to 40 tons of ice daily.
“Everybody is buying ice for barbecues and parties and kegs, special events, concerts and camping,” CEO Brian Jensen said.
During the hot months of the year, ice is in its highest demand. Jensen said Ball Storage sells the most ice on the Fourth of July. This year it sold about 400 tons on the Fourth of July weekend.
“With an ice machine, the colder it is, the more ice it can actually produce. We fight that battle with the hotter days. (That’s) when we sell the most, but it’s also when we produce the least. We offset that with a large amount of (freezer) storage,” Jensen said.
When the ice is being made, it goes through several steps before being packaged.
First regular tap water comes through the pipes and is filtered and purified. The water stripped of all the minerals and salt it contains.
“It’s the same system you would find in a carwash. The last rinse they give you so that you don’t get the white film on your car (is) the spot-free rinse. It’s completely purified water,” Jensen said.
Then the water makes it way into a 900-gallon tank and is pushed to an industrial ice machine. From there, the water is frozen, sliced and dropped into a room for packaging.
Workers form an assembly line bag the ice, and organize the bags on large pallets. Afterward the pallets are moved into one of four large freezers. Each freezer is negative 3 degrees and can hold 600 tons of ice.
“We sell a 7-pound crushed bag of ice, we also sell a 20-pound bag of ice. We sell the solid ice, typically to snow shacks, and then we sell a 10-pound block,” Jensen said.
Ball Storage also delivers to stores, restaurants, and other industries all over east Idaho.
“We deliver everywhere down toward Bear Lake, Soda Springs area all the way over to American Falls, up into Yellowstone,” Jensen said. “If you’ve bought a snow cone, there’s a 99 percent chance you’ve (eaten) our ice.”