Barber Partners, Bain Join Forces to Build Cold Storage

Barber Partners LLC and Bain Capital have formed a joint venture that will develop up to 15 Class-A cold storage warehouse projects under the Chill Storage brand. 

The first project in the $500M venture is a 302K SF speculative freezer/cooler facility that will be built on a 34-acre site in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area, the partnership said.

Construction on the cold storage warehouse in Denton, TX will begin this summer. The $52M facility will feature 50-foot clearance heights to allow for advanced racking technology and systems.

“There is no question that there is an enormous need for new, modern cold storage facilities. Even before (the pandemic), the consumption of prepared and frozen meals was rapidly on the rise,” Patrick J. Barber, chairman of Barber Partners said.

“We’re looking forward to the joint venture with Bain Capital as an operating developing partner so we can develop high-technology industrial cold storage warehouses across the county in high-demand markets,” Barber added.

David DesPrez, a director at Bain Capital, said the partnership would focus on delivering “next-generation” refrigerated and freezer storage space.

“With the growing complexity of the food and beverage supply chain, we believe our highly adaptable, modern warehouse design will allow us to meet the full spectrum of food tenant needs and provide critical infrastructure to the US food distribution system,” DesPrez said, in prepared remarks.

Based in Dallas, Barber Partners specializes in ground-up developments including industrial and multifamily properties. According to a report in the Dallas Business Journal, the Chill Storage partnership initially will target markets in the southeast and then expand to a national footprint.

Barber told DBJ that “speed to market” is an essential component of the joint venture with Bain, with the partnership prioritizing sites that can be developed the fastest. 

There are an estimated 900 cold storage warehouses in the US, less than 2% of all industrial space; the average age of existing freezer facilities is 40 years. The demand during the pandemic for frozen food ordered online quickly exceeded storage capacity.

With most of the existing cold storage inventory upstream in the cold chain, the surge in e-commerce orders of frozen food mobilized third-party logistics players to scramble to acquire last-mile cold storage properties.

The industry leaders in cold storage keep getting larger.

Novi, Michigan-based Lineage Logistics, the world leader in cold-chain storage, has raised more than $4B during the pandemic to fund a rapid expansion that has grown its overall storage capacity to more than 2.5B cubic feet.

Americold Realty, a REIT that specializes in cold storage, went public in early 2018 and used the funding to fuel a rapid expansion made the REIT the second-largest global player in cold storage, with 250 facilities encompassing about 1.5B refrigerated cubic feet of storage.