Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) and Americold Realty Trust, Inc. (Americold) on Dec. 12 reported plans to “formally explore” co-development opportunities in Mexico as part of their continued collaboration to co-locate Americold warehouse facilities on CPKC’s network.
The partners launched their “strategic collaboration” in June 2023. Temperature-controlled warehousing and logistics firm Americold in February 2024 announced plans to establish its first facility at CPKC’s IFG Terminal in Kansas City, Mo.,, and broke ground in April on the 335,000-square-foot, $127 million import-export hub. The new facility is projected to open in mid-2025, the partners said, and will support both importers and exporters of temperature sensitive food between Mexico and the United States.
They reported that Americold plans to invest between $500 million and $1 billion over the next five to 10 years in development projects with CPKC and its other strategic partner DP World.
“Our strategic partnership with CPKC creates a platform that will deliver significant and sustainable supply chain value for existing and new customers in North America,” said George Chappelle, CEO at Americold, which owns and operates 243 facilities with 1.5 billion cubic feet of storage in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America. “Exploring opportunities in Mexico is a natural continuation of this collaboration as we look at ways we can attack inefficiencies in the current cold chain.”
“We are excited to build on our successful strategic collaboration with Americold with new facilities in Mexico as we leverage the unrivaled reach of our North American network to support the cold storage supply chain,” CPKC President and CEO Keith Creel said. “That network, combined with our premium intermodal services moving one of the largest fleets of refrigerated containers in the industry, and this growing collaboration with Americold, continues to create new transportation options for our customers shipping a range of food and other products across North America.”
CPKC last year announced it was adding 1,000 new 53-foot refrigerated intermodal containers to its network, more than doubling its existing fleet and bringing more shipping options to customers using the expanding Mexico Midwest Express (MMX) premium intermodal service. The Class I described MMX as “North America’s first single-line rail service offering for refrigerated shippers from the Midwest to Mexico, a market currently served by trucks.”
