Global cold storage capacity grows 8.6%

USA: Growth in emerging markets is said to have been a major contributor to an 8.6% increase in cold storage capacity over the last two years.

Latest figures from the Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA) reveal that global gold storage capacity total capacity reached 600 million m³ this year, an increase of 8.6% since the last time survey in 2014.

“It’s exciting to see such strong growth and new construction around the world,” said Corey Rosenbusch, president and CEO of the GCCA, an organisation representing all major industries engaged in temperature-controlled logistics.

“We have been watching the shift in capacity as a product of middle class growth in emerging markets like China and India even as consolidation occurs in other developed markets,” he added.

Construction also occurred in markets such as Uzbekistan and Turkey that previously had little cold storage capacity. The United States, Mexico, and Canada each indicated growth in refrigerated warehouse capacity since 2014.

While reports from several European countries indicated declines in refrigerated warehouse space in 2016, Turkey and the UK were exceptions. Expansion in the UK was credited to increased construction of distribution centres by retailers.

Written by Dr Victoria Salin, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University, the 30-page report includes analyses on growth trends in global capacity, market development indicators, and characteristics of refrigerated warehouses around the world.

The report features cold storage market data on 52 countries. During the last two years, approximately 11 million cubic meters of additional refrigerated warehouse capacity has been added to the GCCA database from countries that were included for the first time in 2016. The newly added countries were South Korea, Peru, Mauritius, Ecuador and Kenya.

“Having tracked the trends in refrigerated warehousing for several years, we are now able to establish that large-format supermarket retailing is a leading indicator of warehousing in nearly all countries (India is the exception),” Salin said. “In countries where the rate of supermarket expansion exceeded 25% per year, the refrigerated warehouse market penetration per capita grew by 20% or better. This analysis gives insight on the consumer and points out the countries where refrigerated warehouse capacity has not kept pace with the growing population.”

Further details on the 2016 Global Cold Storage Capacity Report are available here.