Monday, April 27, 2020

The UK Food Situation Is Going to Get Interesting

From Reuters:

World's biggest cold storage supplier could reach full UK capacity in three weeks
The world’s biggest cold storage supplier said its UK warehouses could soon run out of space as suppliers to restaurants and mass caterers closed due to the coronavirus lockdown are forced to freeze food for longer to ride out the crisis.

Mike McClendon, president of international operations for Lineage Logistics, said its 15 facilities in the UK are more than 90% full.

“In three to five weeks you could see the overflowing of frozen and chilled volumes at our facilities. We have concerns right now that volumes need to continue to flow,” he told Reuters.
He did not say what would happen if 100% capacity was reached. But the impact is expected to be felt on the producers, who would either have to cut production or get rid of excess stock that they cannot store in warehouses.

This is the latest flurry of business for Lineage Logistics after its warehouses filled up last year with food stocks amid fears of shortages ahead of Britain’s exit from the European Union, with capacity exceeding 90% again.

After the December election of Boris Johnson, when after years of uncertainty it became clear that Britain would leave the trading bloc, as it did on Jan. 31, capacity dropped to 85%, which the company said is a more normal level....
....MUCH MORE

Somehow related, April 22:
Shipping: "Global container shipments set to fall 30% in next few months" (warehouses are full)

And previously on cold storage:

June 3, 2019
Logistics: Big Money For Warehouses, Looking at Cold Storage.
...This next bit brings back some memories. My second stock to double was a cold storage company, actually a dairy with a cold storage operation that was valued at about one-quarter of comparables. I started chipping away at the float and before I got anywhere near enough stock, the management, who knew full well the value of the operation, did an LBO and took it private at 2x market and ended up generating cash-on-cash returns (for themselves) of around 40% per annum for a decade or so.
Bastards.
June 6, 2019
"It's About To Become A Hot Market For Cold Storage Facilities"—CBRE
March 30, 2020
"Coronavirus: Panic buying sparks surge in flexible storage demand"

Cold is very important.

If interested see January 2019's "Logistics of Cold"
That essay mentions an apple farmer, Barbara Pratt. She's also Maersk's director of refrigerated technical services.
Maersk thinks pretty highly of her, giving her a page on the website: THE QUEEN OF COOL.

Unfortunately, when the cybercrooks attacked Maersk it was lost—you now get a "subdomain takeover" notice so, if interested here she is saved at the Internet Archive page