Cold storage construction continues to ramp up in the United States as the entire Global Cold Chain Market heats up.

The demand for cold storage is driven by a variety of factors from COVID-19 vaccine refrigeration needs to an increased post-pandemic appetite for online grocery shopping to changing dietary habits, especially those of millennials.

“All this has sparked a need for temperature-regulated food-storage warehouses -- facilities that can safely store dairy products, meat, produce, and other perishable items,” wrote Maurie Backman on April 26, 2021 in “Here’s Another Reason to Invest in Cold Storage This Year”.  “And now, REITs [real estate investment trusts] like Americold Realty Trust are in the process of building or preparing to build out massive facilities to meet this demand.”

Cold Storage Benefits From COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout

The cold storage market got a big boost in December and January as two of the three COVID-19 vaccines that first came to market, Moderna and Pfizer shots, required cold storage in transit and on-site to keep the vaccine viable.

According to the Wall Street Journal, as of May 9, 2021, nearly a third of the U.S. population was fully vaccinated.  

While the vaccination rate is slowing down in the U.S., the demand for cold storage of the vaccines will not go away any time soon as Pfizer, the most popular COVID-19 shot in the U.S., announced that it expected to produce 3 billion doses this year, up from an earlier 2.5 billion projection, and at least 4 billion doses will be produced in 2022, up from a 3 billion forecast.

There is also the possibility of coronavirus vaccine boosters in the future that could require cold storage, and some are forecasting yearly COVID-19 shots, much like the current yearly flu shot.

Pandemic Accelerates Shift to Online Grocery Shopping

While consumers were slowly discovering online grocery shopping with offerings from companies such as Amazon Fresh and Fresh Direct, the pandemic accelerated the e-commerce embrace almost overnight as areas of the country went into lockdown.

“Early in the outbreak, many consumers shifted to online food shopping when the act of entering a supermarket began to mean waiting in a long line outdoors due to local capacity limits,” wrote Backman. “And even once those restrictions eased up, many consumers felt safer pointing and clicking their way to their food items of choice and having them delivered or picking them up curbside.”

Cold storage facilities are needed to store these grocery items with cold storage construction projected to grow to $18.6 billion by 2027 from $7 billion in 2019, according to consulting firm Emergen.

The demand is not going away with the easing of the pandemic according to a recent survey.

According to a new Instacart survey of 2,038 U.S. adults conducted recently online by The Harris Poll:

• Nearly half of all Americans (48 percent) say that they ordered groceries online during the pandemic.
• 77 percent that used a service like Instacart during the pandemic plan to do so again in the future.

“Online grocery fits seamlessly into the more flexible schedules that the world is moving toward after a collective awakening to the benefits of remote work,” said Laurentia Romaniuk, Instacart’s Trend Expert and Senior Product Manager.

Diet, Food Preferences, Tech Drives Global Cold Chain Market

Across the globe there is growing demand for cold storage thanks to a combination of things from technological advances in the processing, packaging and storage of meat and seafood, to changes to protein-rich diets to millennials preferences for meals based on frozen foods.

“The global cold chain market offers a solution to one of the biggest challenges the food & beverages industry faces: the perishable nature of processed and frozen food,” writes Fior Markets in a report released May 3, 2021.

Fior estimates that the global cold chain market will grow from $233.8 billion in 2020 to $546.7 billion by 2028, an annual growth rate of 14.6 percent.

Forces at play according to Fior:

• Switch from carbohydrate-rich foods to protein-rich diets due to health concerns.
• Advancements in technology to process, package and store meat and seafood.
• Trend towards frozen foods by millennials, who are looking for effortless meals with authentic taste to it.

“The trend of purchasing frozen and processed foods has paved the way for opportunities such as the need for automated warehouses, innovative solutions for last-mile delivery, and advanced devices to monitor the temperature,” said Fior.

Other takeaways from the report:

• Refrigerated warehousing segment dominated the market and held the largest market share at 65 percent. Refrigerated transport had 35 percent share.
• Frozen segment dominated the market and held the largest market share at 60 percent. The chilled segment captured 40 percent share.
• Dairy and frozen desserts segment dominated the market and held the largest market share of 35 percent, mostly because of the transportation of milk-based products and their sensitivity to temperature, light, and dust.

Contact Green Profiles today to find out how our insulated metal panels can help complete your cutting-edge cold storage construction.