The Greene King racking plant, designed by Hopkins in 1977, was built to replace inadequate cellars at the brewery’s original Westgate site in Bury St Edmunds. With the rising popularity of draught beer, a new facility was needed to handle the specialised racking process, which involves cleaning, filling, and loading casks. The single-storey building was designed for efficiency but executed with refinement.

The structure is rectangular in plan and section, with a raised concrete floor set at lorry tailgate height. This both protected against flooding from the nearby River Linnett and streamlined operations at the full-width loading bays. A steel superstructure of lattice trusses on tubular columns supports a flat roof, cantilevered to create sheltered loading zones. Additional side cantilevers allowed columns to be set back, forming full-length corridors that connect to ground level via short external steps.

Externally, the building is clad in silver PVF2-coated steel, with side walls punctuated only by central exit doors and fully glazed roller shutters at the ends. Internally, smaller freestanding units house offices, mess rooms, and workshops, while larger bays accommodate storage and machinery. Simple details such as the raised “hovering” floor, horizontally profiled cladding, and dignified cantilevered porticoes distinguish it from standard industrial sheds of the late 1970s.