A consortium planning a 120,000-square-foot cold storage facility for the Portland, Maine, U.S.A waterfront is aiming to break ground on the project this fall, Mainebiz reported.
Treadwell Franklin Infrastructure, Eimskip, and Amber Infrastructure have formed a consortium to construct the facility on state-owned land at the International Marine Terminal in Portland. The facility, according to Treadwell Franklin, is intended to meet the growing demand of Eimskip – an Icelandic shipping company that transports large amounts of whitefish and other seafood from Scandinavia to the U.S. – as well as growing demand from food, beverage, and biopharmaceutical companies in the region.
Eimskip has been steadily increasing its service in Portland, Maine, with shipments of frozen seafood playing a part in that expansion, Executive Vice President of Eimskip U.S.A. Andrew Haines told SeafoodSource in 2019.
Plans for the facility were approved by the city’s planning board in 2020. Americold planned to build a cold-storage facility on the same location in 2015, but those plans never materialized, according to the Portland Press Herald.
Treadwell Franklin Principal George Campbell told Mainebiz that with rising construction costs, the facility is likely to cost around USD 40 million (EUR 33.9 million) to complete.
"The project is alive and well, but it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of pieces," he told the publication. "We're as committed to the project as we were a year ago, as the market gets nothing but stronger in terms of the cold storage food chain supply."
Image courtesy of Treadwell Franklin Infrastructure
