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Cold Storage Industry Heats Up in Virginia

Virginia provides its more than 200 food and beverage processing companies with ample cold storage options.

Q2 2024
Located at the center of the U.S. East Coast and within a one-day drive of 47% of the U.S. population, Virginia offers an ideal location to serve East Coast customers or to provide a single gateway to the U.S. market. Source: VEDP, Esri Business Analyst
Located at the center of the U.S. East Coast and within a one-day drive of 47% of the U.S. population, Virginia offers an ideal location to serve East Coast customers or to provide a single gateway to the U.S. market. Source: VEDP, Esri Business Analyst
Editor's Note: This article was paid for and written by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and approved by Area Development.


Whether it’s getting fresh vegetables from farm to table or ensuring vials of essential medicines make it safely from the lab to the hospital, Virginia serves as a backbone of the crucial East Coast supply chain, ensuring that important elements of everyday life get to where they need to be. The expanding ecosystem of cold storage facilities in Virginia is a critical piece of that puzzle.

Virginia’s central East Coast location enables companies to efficiently access major economic hubs east of the Mississippi River and across the continental United States. Located within a one-day drive of nearly half of U.S. consumers, Virginia offers companies a single gateway into critical customer markets along the affluent Northeast corridor, across the high-growth Southeast, and throughout the Midwest. In high-growth manufacturing sectors like food and beverage processing and biopharmaceuticals, demand for cold storage providers to ensure products get from Point A to Point B safely — and at the proper temperature — is skyrocketing.

Virginia’s central East Coast location enables companies to efficiently access major economic hubs east of the Mississippi River and across the continental United States. “Building a fertile ecosystem of state-of-the-art distribution establishments like cold storage facilities is crucial to ensuring the success of the supply chain in Virginia and the world,” said Eric Jehu, vice president of logistics at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. “Virginia is rising to the occasion by recognizing the needs of these massive manufacturers and making sure the temperature-controlled distribution elements are ready to take those products where they need to go.”

Virginia offers a diverse ecosystem of partners and suppliers for food and beverage processors, including dozens of packagers and bottlers, more than 160 warehousing and distribution establishments, and 43,000 farms. More than 200 food and beverage processing companies have chosen to locate or expand in Virginia over the last decade, creating more than 7,900 new jobs and making capital investments totaling $3.4 billion. Virginia’s life sciences sector has also gained significant momentum, with 62 life sciences industry projects announced in just the past five years. Those projects amounted to a $2.5 billion investment in the biopharmaceutical industry, which has acute demand for reliable cold storage.

More than 200 food and beverage processing companies have chosen to locate or expand in Virginia over the last decade. FreezPak Logistics, LLC, recently announced a $77.5 million investment in the City of Suffolk to construct a 245,000-square-foot cold storage facility to serve the Mid-Atlantic region via The Port of Virginia’s Hampton Roads terminals. Across the Commonwealth in the Northern Shenandoah Valley, WCS Logistics is investing $27 million in Frederick County to build a new 83,000-square-foot cold storage facility with the capacity for over 13,000 pallets to meet increasing demand. There are currently more than 10,000 jobs in the refrigerated trucking and warehousing industry in Virginia. It’s a $1 billion industry that’s continuing to grow. Devoting resources to expand this ecosystem, Jehu says, is part of what makes Virginia a top state for location, infrastructure, and business climate.

“Virginia is responding to manufacturer demand by providing ample cold storage options for rapidly expanding industries,” Jehu said. “This commitment to the manufacturing sector is establishing Virginia as a hub for state-of-the-art, temperature-controlled products. The Commonwealth is actively ensuring that suppliers have every element they need to get their products to market and take their companies to the next level.”

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