Jack Link's, maker of meat snacks sold in more than 40 countries, is expanding its distribution facility in Underwood, Iowa, to add warehouse capacity, as well as a highly automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) to improve efficiency. 

Dole Foods has opened a new state-of-the-art frozen fruit facility in McDonough, Georgia, Dole's third frozen fruit facility in the United States, complimenting the existing operations in Atwater, California, and Decatur, Michigan. The new facility is approximately 60,000 square feet, fully automated and will have four manufacturing lines which when at capacity can produce 60 million pounds of frozen fruit annually. The operations will package frozen fruit for Dole's retail, food service and private label customers on the east coast.

A M King has partnered with ALDI U.S. to provide property consulting, design, and construction of ALDI's new facility in Loxley, Alabama. The 570,660-sq.-ft. divisional headquarters and distribution center will service more than 100 stores in southern Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and the Florida panhandle, which will mark the company's presence in 38 states.

Denver’s first cold storage speculative development is currently under construction. 76 Freeze, a 247,032-square-foot state-of-the-art, multi-temperature facility, is scheduled for completion in October 2021. Located at 189 Bromley Business Parkway in Brighton, Colorado, the brand-new facility situated on 17 acres is strategically positioned to service Colorado’s Front Range and Rocky Mountain regions. Approximately 166,000 square feet of space in the multi-user facility has been preleased to a single tenant.

Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG), headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas, is the largest cooperative food wholesaler in the United States. The company, with sales of more than $10 billion, is planning and building a leading-edge, highly automated full-range logistics center in Hernando, Mississippi,

Looking back on what we’ll call 2020 B.C. (Before Coronavirus), the pipeline for cold storage construction was already robust and healthy. According to research by commercial real estate firm CBRE, overall industrial construction—which encompasses cold storage, along with warehouses, distribution centers, manufacturing facilities, self-storage, office and flex space—was at 298 million square feet (MSF) before COVID-19, bolstered by the ongoing rise of e-commerce. 

Twinlode Automation, an integrator of warehouse automation and storage systems, announced it has become an official member of the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW). Twinlode Automation has long held expertise in the movement of time-sensitive food and produce items as they are moved from field to store shelves, and the decision to join the IARW underscores that commitment and better positions the company for being more deeply involved in the industry.

The association also compiled separate lists of the largest operators in North America, Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean, a testament to the strength of the global cold chain industry.

A California bag and film manufacturer converts an existing warehouse into a LEED-certified, climate-controlled space.