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It should be concluded warm to enter the largest cold automatic storage warehouse in the UK, where the platforms loaded with chips and pizza speed are loaded along the bars and raised by robots to a 15 -second storage cube longer and wider than the football field. Wear a thick coat, hat and gloves to 23c minus, and forget a pen: the ink will freeze.

It is similar to walking in the refrigerator cabin in the kitchen, but this box is huge and oxygen is reduced to reduce the risk of fires. The six platforms sit depth inside long columns of steel shelves, loaded and retrieved by machines that are monitored by humans in a warm control room nearby. While I was looking at the highlands, I have notes using a wig pen.

This cold cube in Corby, the former Northhamptonchyer town, owned by Negold, a Dutch company that has stored and delivered frozen foods to producers such as McCain Fods, Leonfer and the ice cream group in the United Kingdom. The platforms are brought in refrigerated trucks and sent to supermarkets upon request: 4000 platforms that pass inside and outside each day.

It is great even for NewCold, which runs 22 world facilities: Corby is the second largest store after a $ 300 million store in Indiana, which was opened in 2023. It is a party from the cold iceberg. Other cubes have risen in the “Logistics Triangle” in Midlands as global companies such as NewCold and Enege of the Us Transform this industry.

The closest thing to the United Kingdom competitor to NewCold is Magnavale, who opened this month a cool 80 million pounds of £ 130 million in Lincolnshire with 101,000 platform spaces, compared to 151,000 in Corby. Its headquarters is located in Chesterfield but is owned by Sadil Group, the family office in Luxembourg, Stephen Lawrence, a British real estate developer.

The industry was very fragmented, as many family ownership operators are transported to warehouses where platforms were transported on fork lifting trucks. This gives way to the automatic cubes that are expensive for construction but effective to operate them: 160 people working in Corby, a third of the number needed by the traditional manual store.

Cubes occupy less ground and use less electricity, which is vital with high energy prices and environmental standards. The UK industry spent 1.2 billion pounds last year on energy and a third of its facilities for more than 25 years, according to the Cold Series Union. Many facilities must be upgraded, and the modernization modification of construction is difficult to again.

NewCold is part of this development. Founded in the Netherlands in 2012 by Bram Hage, a former soccer player, with the support of Westport Capital Partners in the United States. It indicates that the Netherlands has a large logistical industry and “produces a large amount of fried potatoes.” This experience has taken frozen storage and vegetables around the world.

Along with Corby, Negold has a large facility in Wickfield, West Yorkshire, to serve northern England (proportions, that Open In the United States last year, it also has the British “Superhubs” twin in the north and south). Hag says that the United Kingdom is an attractive market because supermarkets have advanced chains to provide them and need food companies to suit them smoothly.

But there is a disturbing side of the cold chain concentration. The UK imported 32 billion pounds of refrigerated and frozen foods in 2023, approximately three times the amount it had confiscated. The border friction since Britain’s exit from the European Union means that it needs larger stores to ensure the continuity of food supplies. Corby is part of the critical infrastructure in the UK.

More of this infrastructure has become owned by foreigners due to the savings of size. The size of the newcold allows it to merge it vertically: its facilities are operated on its own programs and the manufacture of its steel shelves, which helps it to build quickly. “We are following our customers all over the world,” says Hag.

It is difficult for young operators to compete: NewCold is the fourth largest cold chain in terms of global capacity, while Magnavale is ranked 18th. Andrew, Stephen Lawrence Andrew Magnafal, is honored, says the latter “in this in the long term.” Cold storage now includes 60 percent of Sadil’s origins and plans to expand in continental Europe.

Advanced ice industry for decades is to pick up speed. In Corby, trucks are reflected in the sealed bays with air bags to stop the entry of warmth when unloaded and fill them. The platforms for supermarkets are constantly removed to the warehouses. The cold chain should continue to rotate.

john.gapper@ft.com