Monday, January 18, 2010

VersaCold Starts Work on New Tacoma Port Cold Storage Facility

Vancouver BC-based cold storage firm VersaCold Logistics Services has begun construction of a 196,000-square-foot cold storage facility on a leased 17-acre parcel at the Port of Tacoma.

The new $30 million facility, according to the firm, will complement VersaCold facilities in British Columbia and California.

The $1.2 billion a year VersaCold, the second-largest cold storage firm in the world, with more than 120 temperature controlled facilities worldwide, predicts that the facility will be operating a near full capacity when it opens the first half of the facility in July. A second half of the facility is planned to open in mid-August. VersaCold officials declined to name customers signed on to the new facility.

The facility is being built by Burlington, Washington-based Fisher & Sons, which has built more than 100 cold storage facilities since 1954.

The project was facilitated by the Tacoma-Pierce County Economic Development Board, which worked as a liaison between VersaCold, the City Of Tacoma, and Pierce County to acquire the property and expedite the permitting process.