A Huge Advantage at BCS!
Food Processing Facilities are constantly growing and upgrading in the United States and Canada. They are consistently in demand. Growth, automation, food safety standards, labor constraints, and inflation all demand constant improvements and expansion in food processing.
Bellingham Cold Storage has built and integrated leased Food Processing Facilities into our warehousing since the 1960s. The scale that we do this is unique.
The Pros of Our Leased Food Processing Plants
We currently lease 12 food plants, to international, regional, and local food companies. Integrating their food factory with their warehousing, and in some cases their import or export terminal, provides these ‘tenants’ with…
- Less handling
- Increased food safety
- Economies such as access to our extensive infrastructure
- .ie our refrigerant and BCS engineers from our ammonia engine rooms for their specialized freezing equipment
- Flexible packing warehousing
Production Lines adjacent to their products stored in our warehouses with no ‘Work in Process’ (WIP) shuttle trucking is also very cost-effective and better for food safety and damage loss. Being onsite adjacent to their shipping enables better control and easier inspection.
Low-Capital Intensive Solution for Growing Food Companies
Growing food companies are always looking for better, less capital-intensive solutions. We feel that our ‘Warehouse Adjacent, Leased Food Processing Facilities’ have always been an excellent solution and here’s why…
- Our rates have always been competitive with current lease rates
- Our buildings were designed for food production (.ie drains in the floor)
- There is no shuttle truck across town from the warehouse to your food plant
- Less transportation, lower chance of damaged goods
- Growing companies can invest their scarce captial in R&D, marketing and inventory, vs buildings, land, and shuttle trucks
We have some of the largest tenants still leasing processing facilities from us for 30-50 years, because of our benefits. They started when they were much smaller, or just breaking into the US market with their branded products, but they could have built their own facilities decades ago. We also act as the local US warehouse for Canadian processors.
What Happens at BCS Plants?
From simple repackaging, grading and relabeling, to year-round large-scale retail fruit packaging and seafood portioning and branding, to major manufacturing facilities producing East Indian cheese and other consumer products, surimi crab and smoked foods, etc, hundreds of millions of pounds of processed branded food is produced onsite in leased BCS plants every year.
And we plan to grow. We have the land to add several more leased food manufacturing facilities to our Bellingham food park campuses. If you are looking to grow, then please consider a build-to-suit facility adjacent to your warehousing. You will see that we offer safer, more manageable and controllable, cost-effective food-processing plants.