Americold Realty Trust, Inc., through its joint venture RSA Cold Chain in Dubai, announced plans to build and operate a new $35 million, state-of-the-art cold storage facility with 40,000 pallet positions, in the Jebel Ali Free Zone (Jafza) in the Port of Jebel Ali in Dubai. This investment builds on the strategic collaboration between Americold and DP World, the leading provider of worldwide smart end-to-end supply chain logistics with a global port infrastructure.
The new facility will offer multi-temperature capabilities and connect to DP World’s best-in-class logistics solutions. Earlier this year, RSA Cold Chain entered into a long-term land lease agreement with DP World to support this development. Construction will start early 2024 and is expected to be completed by Q1 of 2025.
In March 2023, Americold announced a strategic investment into RSA Cold Chain in Dubai. The investment provided a scalable, investable operating platform for market entry and expansion in the Middle East and India. Construction is already under way to double the capacity of the current RSA facility in Dubai South. This, combined with the new development at the DP World port, will more than triple current capacity in the Dubai market to more than 70,000 pallet positions.
Collaboration between Americold and DP World began in 2021 and was formalized in November of 2022 with the signing of a Global Partnership Agreement. The planned development in Jebel Ali will be the first-of-its-kind to combine Americold’s global temperature-controlled infrastructure with DP World’s port infrastructure and end-to-end logistics solutions. This strategic combination will result in unprecedented optimization of temperature sensitive food flows in and out of the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
