According to the 2016 Global Cold Chain Alliance’s (GCCA) Global Cold Storage Capacity Report, refrigerated warehouse capacity around the world has been growing steadily since 2014, with much of the increase coming from new construction in emerging markets. Total capacity now stands at 600 million cubic meters, a rise of 8.6% over the past two years.
“It’s exciting to see such strong growth and new construction around the world. 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,” said Corey Rosenbusch, president and chief executive officer of the Alexandria, Virginia, USA-headquartered GCCA.
The report is based on a survey conducted by the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW), a core partner of the GCCA. It has been systematically collecting data on the global cold storage industry since 1998.
The United States, Mexico, and Canada have seen expansion in refrigerated warehouse capacity since 2014. Construction also occurred in markets that previously had relatively little cold storage capacity, namely Uzbekistan and Turkey.
Survey input from Europe, however, indicated that cold storage space declined in 2016 in several countries. Great Britain was an exception. Expansion there was largely due to retailers’ construction of distribution centers for private use.
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, namely: South Korea, Peru, Mauritius, Ecuador and Kenya.
Written by Dr. Victoria Salin, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University, the 30-page report features cold storage market data on 52 countries and includes analyses on growth trends in global capacity, market development indicators, and characteristics of refrigerated warehouses around the world.
“Having tracked the trends in refrigerated warehousing for a number of years, we are now able to establish that large-format supermarket retailing is a leading indicator of warehousing in nearly all countries, with the exception of India,” 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.”
The 2016 Global Cold Storage Capacity Report is available to IARW members free of charge and may be obtained for a fee by nonmembers. Contact the GCCA by phone at +1 703 373 4300, or email@gcca.org, for more information.
