Americold Realty Trust (COLD-N) is ready to construct a new, 190,000-square-foot cold-storage distribution centre at Port Saint John in New Brunswick to serve both Canadian and international clients.

Ground-breaking is planned for this spring with a timeline to complete construction by the latter half of 2026, “depending on weather conditions,” Mathew Moore, Americold's vice-president, global market strategy told RENX in an email exchange.

“Mobilization is already underway,” Moore wrote and “weather-related delays are expected to be the primary challenge.”

The facility is expected to cost between $75 and $80 million. It will handle “any products requiring temperature control to ensure safety and quality, with a primary focus on temperature-sensitive food," Moore wrote.

Once complete, it’s expected to be the only multi-tenant cold storage facility within a 100-kilometre radius, according to Americold.

Growing port has seen "significant investments"

“Port Saint John has been the beneficiary of significant investments in recent years from both DP World and CPKC, and the infrastructure they have built has attracted major global shipping lines to this location,” said George Chappelle, chief executive officer at Atlanta-based Americold in the announcement.

“Developing a state-of-the-art facility in Port Saint John marks an exciting step forward as the company expands into a strategically compelling geography serving high-volume international routes, providing unparalleled opportunities for integration with our premier partners,” he said.

According to its website, Americold is the world’s largest publicly traded REIT focused on temperature-controlled warehouses. It owns and operates 245 cold-storage facilities globally that hold about 1.5 billion cubic feet of refrigerated storage.

For Port Saint John, this announcement comes as a result of earlier logistics-related investments made by the port, as well as the governments of Canada and New Brunswick.

“It’s the infrastructure we put in place, almost a quarter of a billion (dollars). We’ve got modern, state-of-the-art infrastructure. We’ve got deep water. We can handle large container vessels,” said Craig Bell Estabrooks, president and chief executive officer at Port Saint John, in an interview with RENX.

The initial investment was provided some years ago to the tune of $205 million, Bell Estabrooks explained.

“That funding was put in place in the fall of 2016 and DP World was selected to be the operator of the facility. It’s been a tremendous growth trajectory. When DP World started, we did thousands of TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) and now we’re doing hundreds of thousands of TEUs,” Bell Estabrooks said.

The enhancements to the port have brought in an estimated $560 million in new business. 

Americold to work with DP World, CPKC

While construction is soon to begin on the cold-storage distribution centre, some challenges will be apparent, he said.  

“Like anything in construction right now, in the real estate business, it’s materials and making sure that you’ve got a good labour pool to draw upon. We’ve been pretty fortunate in this part of the world, big projects that we’ve undertaken as a port authority, we’ve had sufficient labour; we’ve been able to get materials in and do projects on time, on budget, and Americold is a world-class player," Bell Estabrooks said.

"We’ve got a lot of confidence that they’ll be able to do this.”

Americold will partner with DP World and CPKC (Canadian Pacific Kansas City) to manage the facility, and it is expected to create 100 new jobs in Saint John.

Opportunities NB (ONB) — the provincial economic development Crown corporation — will contribute as much as $1.01 million in payroll rebates to create those positions, which should result in $37 million in GDP growth for New Brunswick, according to a release.

Markets for the storage facility will be “Central and Eastern Canada, as well as international markets in Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America,” Moore wrote in his replies to RENX.

This investment also represents something new for Americold.

“In most areas, temperature-controlled warehousing and value-added-services have not been a primary focus for either CPKC or DP World and conversely temperature-controlled logistics has not been a primary focus for Americold," Moore explained.

"Both CPKC and DP World are world-class supply chain solutions providers, and both have made significant investments in infrastructure and logistics services that optimize the movement of products from production to consumption."

Bell Estabrooks said this announcement is a considerable boost for the port's facilities.

“We’re early on in our rebirth story of growing and creating a business model for our container terminal that didn’t exist a decade ago," he said, "so to add another global partner this early into our journey, it’s a really good signal to the market that Saint John is back and we’re really positioned for growth."