CBRE predicts that much of the growth in the cold storage sector will occur in gateway markets like Los Angeles and the New York area, as well as leading food-production states such as Pennsylvania.

PHILADELPHIA—The continued growth in online grocery sales is one factor that prompts CBRE to predict demand for up to 100 million square feet of cold storage space in the US over the next five years.

In a newly released report, CBRE ranks Pennsylvania, and specifically the Lehigh Valley as the sixth largest cold storage market in the country with 213.5 million square feet of inventory.

The state of New Jersey came in at number 10 with an inventory of 136.7 million square feet.

“With the strategic location of Eastern Pennsylvania to major US consumer markets, we expect demand for cold storage space to continue to increase,” says CBRE's William Wolf, EVP, who is based in Allentown, PA.

A recent report from the Food Marketing Institute and Nielsen projects that groceries ordered online will account for 13% of total grocery sales by 2022, up from 3% in 2018. Such growth would amount to an additional $100 billion in annual grocery sales conducted online, CBRE states.

This outlook would result in significant changes for the industrial cold-storage industry, which at 3.6 billion cubic feet (an estimated 214 million square feet) currently accounts for a tiny portion of US industrial-and-logistics real estate overall. Much of the cold-storage sector's growth is likely to occur in gateway markets like Los Angeles and the New York area, as well as leading food-production states such as Pennsylvania, the report notes.

“Several factors have combined to fuel expansion of the cold-storage space, from consumers' increasing use of online ordering for groceries to grocers' investment in new delivery strategies and warehouse technologies,” says Adam Mullen, CBRE's Industrial & Logistics leader in the Americas and market leader for greater Philadelphia. “Still, the sector's growth will be somewhat measured because these are specialized facilities requiring significant capital, power and government approvals.”

California came in at number one for leased cold storage space in the US at 396.5 million square feet, followed by: Washington at 271.3 million square feet; Florida at 259.4 million square feet; Texas at 231.4 million square feet; Wisconsin at 228.1 million square feet; Illinois at number 7 at 188 million square feet; Georgia 183.5 million square feet and Oregon at 139.6 million square feet.

While CBRE is predicting strong growth for the cold storage sector, it notes in the report that the challenges of constructing and modernizing cold-storage facilities to keep up with the strong growth of online grocery sales has driven consolidation in the industry as firms seek to gain economies of scale. Four companies control 73.4% of the refrigerated warehouse space in North America.

Lineage Logistics is the leader, accounting for 31.8% of the cold-storage market with more than 1.1 billion cubic feet of space in the US and Canada. Americold takes up 29% with 1 billion cubic feet. Other key players include United States Cold Storage (8.9%) and VersaCold Logistics (3.8%), both having a combined 444 million cubic feet of refrigerated warehouse space in the U.S.