Big players buy out small ventures
One of Hawke’s Bay’s largest cold storage facilities is for sale at a time when big players in the industry are buying out smaller ones.
The cold storage facilities cover just more than 1 hectare and are located on a 1.5ha site in the Hastings industrial suburb of Twyford.
The property is owned by a local family and has a new rateable valuation of $8.77 million, up from the current $6.65m shown on the Hastings District Council website.
‘‘A lot of the bigger ones are buying the smaller ones,’’ New Zealand Cold Storage Association executive officer Jack Bills said.
Some of the big players were Fonterra, Cold Storage Nelson, Emergent Cold and Hall’s Group.
Bills said cold storage was a substantial industry that most people did not think about until they needed it. Without it, food exports would deteriorate and rot.
The association was one of the longest surviving in New Zealand and this year would hold its 88th annual conference.
The tenant of the Twyford cold storage facility is new Australian company Emergent Cold, founded in 2017. It bought New Zealand company Polarcold in 2018, one of the country’s largest cold storage companies, for $151m from Scales Corporation.
In November last year, United States-based logistics company Lineage Logistics announced it had agreements to buy Emergent Cold.
‘‘The combined company will feature over 1.7 billion cubic feet of temperature-controlled capacity across 260 facilities in 10 countries, with a global footprint that now spans North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand,’’ Lineage said at the time.
Bayleys Real Estate is marketing the Twyford facility. Agent Rollo Vavasour said core clients of
Emergent Cold were the region’s large scale and co-operative food producers who stored fruit and vegetables and meat there.
The facility consisted of drive-in blast freezers and chillers, refrigerated storage warehousing, a refrigeration plant and machinery room and administrative offices. Emergent Cold had a lease on the site until 2029 with two further six-year rights of renewal. The facility generated annual rental of $666,629 plus GST.
Vavasour declined to comment when asked if the tenant Emergent Cold was a potential buyer.
The deadline for offers is March 5 unless it sells earlier.