The 2016 Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA) Global Cold Storage Capacity Report shows that cold storage capacity has experienced steady growth since the last time the survey was conducted in 2014.

According to the report, total capacity was 600-million cubic metres in 2016, an increase of 8.6% since 2014.

The report also illustrated that the data revealed that much of the increase in refrigerated warehousing space came from new construction in emerging markets.

“It’s exciting to see such strong growth and new construction globally. We have been watching the shift in capacity, as a result of middle class growth in emerging markets like China and India, even as consolidation occurs in developed markets,” comments GCCA president and CEO Corey Rosenbusch.

He adds that construction also occurred in markets that previously had little cold storage capacity, namely Uzbekistan and Turkey.

Rosenbusch says that each of the US, Mexico and Canada also indicated growth in refrigerated warehouse capacity since 2014.

Reports from Europe, however, indicated that refrigerated warehouse space declined in 2016 in several countries. “Turkey and Great Britain were exceptions. The expansion in Great Britain was largely due to retailers’ construction of distribution centres for private use,” the report illustrates.

Moreover, the GCCA notes that the 30-page report, written by Dr Victoria Salin, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University, includes analyses of growth trends in global capacity, market development indicators and the characteristics of refrigerated warehouses globally.

The GCCA details that the report features cold storage market data on 52 countries. The alliance adds that, during the last two years, about 11-million cubic metres of additional refrigerated warehouse capacity was added to the GCCA database from countries that were included for the first time in 2016. The newly added countries were South Korea, Peru, Mauritius, Ecuador and Kenya.

“Having tracked the trends in refrigerated warehousing for several years, we are now able to establish that large-format supermarket retailing is a leading indicator of warehousing in nearly all countries (India being the exception),” comments Salin.

She explains that, in countries where the rate of supermarket expansion exceeded 25% every year, the refrigerated warehouse market penetration capita grew by 20% or more.