NewCold's $200m expansion of cold storage facility in Vic

On Wednesday, 16 September, global cold-chain logistics company NewCold will open the completed $200m expansion of its cold storage facility at Truganina in Melbourne.

With an additional 80,000 pallet positions, the expansion takes the automated cold-storage facility to 180,000 pallet positions. The company’s two cold-storage facilities at Truganina now have a combined capacity of 405,000 pallet positions across frozen, chilled and ambient storage.

Standing 40 m high and operating at -23°C, the 10,453 m² freezer is claimed to be one of the world’s largest automated high-bay cold-storage facilities and stores food for major manufacturers including McCain, Peters and Patties.

The expansion comes as changing work and eating habits drive demand for convenient food, with CSIRO forecasting Australian consumption of prepared and frozen packaged meals to grow to $3.7bn by 2030.

Founder and CEO Bram Hage, who will be at the official opening, said the additional capacity reflects the growth NewCold is seeing from food manufacturers as consumer demand for frozen and convenient food increases.

“When we came to Australia in 2017, we saw an opportunity to bring a very different approach to cold storage. We started here with McCain and Peters and we’ve grown alongside our customers ever since,” he said.

“What we’ve built together here has now been replicated in other markets around the world.”

Australia was the start of NewCold’s global relationship with McCain, which has since become its largest customer worldwide.

“Australians are buying more frozen food, from fries and ready-made meals to pizza, vegetables and snacks, and that means more product needs to be stored and moved through the cold chain. The additional capacity and technology allows us to scale with that demand without compromising reliability, efficiency or control,” said Ross Fallon from McCain.

“The automation and connectivity to our factories gives us highly accurate stock control, consistent temperature management and less manual handling of our products.”

The warehouse functions like a highly automated airport for food where every pallet is digitally checked in on arrival, scanned, assigned a destination and moved through the high-bay by automated stacker cranes, shuttles and conveyors. Overnight, it uses order data and predictive analytics to reshuffle pallets so the stock needed first the following day is already in position for retrieval at its 21 loading docks. Every pallet must pass a series of automated checks before entering the warehouse. If it’s too heavy, too tall or even slightly overhanging, the system rejects it, reducing the risk of damage, disruption to the automated system and delays further down the supply chain.

NewCold’s Melbourne base is also the national distribution point for Peters, which helped establish the company in Australia.

“For a business supplying frozen products across Australia, maintaining temperature and having product where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, is critical. The additional capacity gives us greater ability to support growing demand,” said Emma-Jane Collins, CEO Peters Ice Cream.

The operation is monitored from a control room where staff can see the movement and location of stock across the warehouse on banks of screens. The 40 m-high freezer is designed to store pallets vertically rather than spreading refrigeration across the site.

By going higher and storing more product within a smaller refrigerated footprint, the company claims it can use around 50% less energy/power than a conventional cold store.

NewCold said it plans to be carbon neutral by 2040.

Image: Supplied