NewCold and B-Built have broken ground for building NewCold’s Automated Coldstore, located in Montauban-de-Bretagne, near Rennes.
The coldstore will use state of the art technology including automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) to automatically move and store products in the ‘dark’ high-bay warehouse. The equipment and operators will be directed by advanced software systems, while products are kept in optimal conditions with all coldstore areas cooled down to temperatures as low as – 23°C.
This advanced cold chain solution ensures that processes are sustainable, traceable, fully integrated with the processes of NewCold’s customers, and always at the very forefront of technological developments. It offers a high and consistent logistic service level, and above all, offer a more sustainable and better food safety alternative to more conventional coldstore solutions.
The futuristic multi-customer coldstore enables food producers, including Froneri as anchor customer, to optimize their cold chain management, with increased agility and responsiveness to better serve the needs of their domestic and international end customers, 24/7.
Bram Hage, Founding Executive Officer, of NewCold says, “With this ground-breaking, NewCold brings to Montauban-de-Bretagne, Rennes, the Brittany region, and France, 20 years of leadership in automated cold storage development and operations. Although our roots are in the Netherlands, our heart is with global food producers whereever NewCold can bring value. We could not be more pleased than to stand as partners beside B-Built and our sponsoring customer, Froneri.
NewCold highly values trusted partnerships and the partnerships created to realize this efficient, giant freezer are very special. Our sincere thanks to the City of Montauban-de-Bretagne for their critical support and guidance. They are easy to work with and clearly focused on economic growth through leading technologies and we are thrilled to be investing here.”
The state of the art freezer is a joint design effort and construction by NewCold and B-Built. The facility will be one of the largest in France with a storage capacity of over 700.000 m3 comparable to the volume of one million household refrigerators.
“B-Built is excited to partner with NewCold on this facility, their second in France,” says Martijn Baartmans, CEO of B-Built. “The unique method used to build this facility, and the technologies incorporated within the facility are the way of the future, and we’re pleased to team with them and their storage partners to make it a reality. Leading edge technologies used in addition to the automated pallet retrieval systems, are the monorail system, the low-oxygen environment eliminating the risk of fire from the inside entirely, and the total building design needing only half the energy consumed by conventional cold stores to keep the products optimally frozen.”
The permitting team at the City of Montauban-de-Bretagne, worked conscientiously to review permits and get the construction off to a smooth start. “From the very first meeting, this project was off to a great start with successful teamwork between company representatives, designers, project managers and our permitting folks.”