Americold Wraps Up $100M Cold Storage Facility in Kansas City
This hub will serve North America’s only single-line rail service for refrigerated goods between the U.S. and Mexico.
Americold Realty Trust has completed the 335,000-square-foot Import-Export Hub in Kansas City, Mo. The $100 million facility is part of a broader network of hubs that the firm is developing through various partnerships, which will facilitate the more efficient movement of food.
Americold announced the project in February 2024 and broke ground the same year in April. The city of Kansas City provided $127.5 million in bonds for the development, according to Yardi Research Data.
The facility came online on some 39 acres at 14981 Thunderbird Road. Key features of the property include on-site USDA inspections to eliminate border delays, load capacity exceeding 50,000 pounds per container to reduce highway congestion and a 300-mile service radius supporting regional food flow.
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Developed in partnership with the Canadian Pacific Kansas City railroad, the warehouse is Americold’s first property on the CPKC rail network. The Kansas City Import-Export Hub will serve the Mexico Midwest Express, which is North America’s only single-line rail service for refrigerated goods between the U.S. and Mexico, according to Americold.
Based in Atlanta, Americold owns and operates more than 230 temperature-controlled warehouses worldwide that represent about 1.4 billion refrigerated cubic feet of storage.
Cold storage development slow
The demand for cold storage facilities remains strong, spurred most recently by the upsurge in demand for prepared foods that began with the pandemic. Moreover, much of the existing cold storage stock is approaching the end of its useful life, with U.S. facilities averaging nearly 40 years of age, according to Colliers.
In 2022 and 2023, developers delivered 5.2 million square feet of spec cold storage space, facilitated by low interest rates and strong rents, Colliers noted. By mid-2023, however, development had slowed in the high interest-rate environment, just as with the rest of the industrial real estate market. In 2024, only 1.1 million square feet of cold storage space came online.
More recently, there has been an uptick in cold storage development, as the market has adjusted to the current interest rate climate. Colliers estimates that 2.2 million square feet will be completed this year. Even so, the market faces headwinds, such as uncertainty regarding tariffs, labor, taxes and infrastructure spending.
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