Consumers have inflation fatigue, and the entire supply chain is working to save any money possible while ensuring quality, availability and product safety.

The refrigerated/frozen storage and distribution industry is expanding, driven by factors including the growth of online grocery shopping.

Cold chain services providers are adapting to shifting meat and poultry product cold chain needs, expanding their networks and cold chain capacity to enable food companies to seize strategic opportunities.

Frozen and refrigerated storage and transit availability and costs

“I’d say that meat and poultry are so disrupted that they are actually affecting the cold storage warehousing market,” said Charles Betts, national sales manager, Interstate Cold Storage.

Avian Influenza has resulted in a lot of bird culling and reduced inventory for poultry, while beef supply issues continue to drive record beef pricing.

“This has created a lot of extra storage space in cold storages nationwide,” Betts said. “The cost of storage is very low on the totem pole of ‘cost bucket challenges’ for both poultry and beef, while disease, feed price and tariffs are now main drivers.”

Ben Medearis, vice president, business development-protein sector for Americold, said capacity near production sites, where blast freezing and tempering occur, is tight and typically secured through long-term commitments.

“These facilities are essential for maintaining product integrity and throughput,” Medearis said. “Forward distribution centers have seen significant speculative development, adding about 3 million pallet positions in North America.”

He said while this has created pricing pressure, these locations typically don’t have the right service capabilities.

“Speculative developers typically don’t have the long-term customer relationships required for production advantaged facilities,” Medearis said. “For proteins, where timing and temperature control are non-negotiable, integrated storage and transportation solutions help reduce dwell time and protect product quality.”

He said energy and labor remain cost drivers, so efficiency measures like LED lighting, rapid doors and automation are steps processors can take to mitigate costs.

“These technologies help processors manage labor volatility while maintaining quality and speed,” he said. “Automation delivers measurable benefits for protein logistics. At production sites, high-density automated systems accelerate blast freezing and reduce manual handling, improving consistency and throughput.”

In distribution centers, Medearis noted that automated layer picking and shuttle systems streamline case-level assembly for retail and foodservice assortments, reducing error rates and labor dependency.

AI-gathered insights improving food safety

Predictive analytics identify temperature anomalies before they compromise meat or poultry quality, enabling timely intervention.

“Item- and case-level tracking, supported by IoT sensors and vision systems, strengthens traceability and simplifies compliance with food safety regulations,” Medearis said. “These capabilities reduce audit cycle times and improve visibility across protein supply chains, which is critical for both domestic and export markets.”

Smart controllers and monitoring help make systems more economical to run and give real time information on temperature and systems performance to make storing of food safer, said Dan Parsenow, regional sales manager, Polar King.

Tariffs’ effect on cold storage and refrigerated distribution for meat and poultry

Betts said there is a reason that “it’s a fluid situation” is widely used when describing the effects of tariffs on cold storage capacity.

“It takes time for the market reactions of tariff increases to take effect in the cold storage marketplace,” he said. “it can take several months to wind down inventory and several weeks to build inventory.”

Tariffs are not just impacting regional cold storage demand, they are also affecting use of certain products domestically, Betts said.

“Producers have choices in their ingredients, and demand often dictates pricing,” he said. “However, I believe the rush to position inventories abroad or here, domestically, was more aggressive in Q1 and Q2 than the back half of the year.”

Medearis said tariffs affect inventory strategies more than physical capacity.

“When trade costs are uncertain, shippers often delay inventory builds, which can lead to congestion at ports when conditions shift,” he said. “This volatility also drives demand for bonded space – authorized areas where product can be stored without immediate payment of duties and taxes.”

Bonded space is limited in temperature-controlled facilities, giving those that offer it an advantage in mitigating costs for protein markets, Medearis said, adding that, “Integrated port and inland networks, including rail-served hubs, help maintain predictable flows and reduce dwell time when tariffs disrupt normal patterns.”

Parsenow said he was not sure of the tariff cost associated with metal panels coming in to the US from China, adding that, “We're not impacted because Polar King manufactures walk-in units in Fort Wayne, Ind.”

Efficiency gains for final-mile foodservice and retail delivery for meat and poultry products

Efficiency in final-mile delivery starts upstream, Medearis said.

“Route-sequenced case picking at retail distribution centers ensures pallets are built in delivery order, reducing unloading time and minimizing stockouts for meat and poultry assortments,” he said. “Coordinating storage, handling, and transportation as a single workflow helps maintain temperature integrity and reduces dwell time at transfer points. In select urban markets, micro-fulfillment strategies are being used to shorten delivery windows for high-priority protein lanes, but these should be deployed selectively based on demand density.”

Parsenow said food companies should try to shorten their final-mile routes by staging products closer to customers.

Across the board, manufacturers have been keeping less stock on hand but turning it faster as a cost cutting measure, Betts said. There also has been more emphasis on full truckload PO’s vs. less-than-load releases and an uptick in multi-stop loading.

“All of our customers are rethinking supply chain and attempting to squeeze any efficiencies out of their design,” he said. “This effort has been ongoing since the height of inflation in 2022,but is just as much a focus now as then.”