Why integrated processing and cold storage solutions matter in a changing seafood market
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As demand for value-added seafood products continues to grow, processors are looking for ways to expand capabilities while maintaining operational flexibility. Meeting that demand, however, often requires additional processing capacity, cold storage, handling, and logistics support.
Americold’s processing solutions offer an alternative path to growth. The cold storage and logistics solutions provider leases out processing space within select facilities, allowing processors to scale production and respond to changing customer requirements while leveraging Americold’s existing services, such as integrated cold storage, blast freezing, handling, and transportation connections.
“Demand for value-added seafood, such as portioned, packaged, seasoned, and ready-to-cook products, is outpacing many processors’ capacity,” Americold VP of Sales Ben Medearis said. “Our facilities are already equipped with the infrastructure needed to support these operations, allowing processors to access specialized processing space and the room to grow their value-added product-lines without having to make a large capital investment.”
Americold has been supporting customers with processing space solutions for years, as part of its broader initiative to help food producers optimize their supply chains. The company currently offers processing space in facilities located in the Pacific Northwest and Northeast with the flexibility of tailoring similar solutions in other regions based on customer needs.
The facilities are currently being leased by a range of seafood companies, from finfish customers to shrimp processors. Depending on the operation, Medearis said the customers can use the space for activities such as filleting, deboning, portioning, shrimp deveining and deshelling, repacking, and other value-added processing.
“It’s all about reducing supply chain complexity,” he explained. “When seafood enters our facilities as a raw product, this service allows it to move directly into processing operations, and then back to storage for distribution.”
By integrating processing space with cold storage and related services, Americold can help customers reduce transportation movements and handoffs, gain greater control over inventory and product flow, and protect highly perishable products. Fewer stops along the supply chain also reduce the risk of damage and get product to its final destination faster, Medearis explained.
“There’s only one thing more time sensitive than seafood on the market, and that’s a newspaper,” he added.
Each processing space is tailored to the customer’s needs. Depending on the product, it may include shrimp deveiners, deshellers, washout areas, drainage systems, and other specialized equipment and infrastructure. Importantly, the customers remain in full control of their own processing lines and workforce.
Medearis said Americold customers have responded very well to the service so far, and that the company evaluates opportunities to provide processing-space solutions wherever customer demand and operational requirements align across its network.
“The feedback has been very positive,” he said. “Our customers tell us this model lets them put their money where it matters most, into growing their business, instead of tying it up in facilities and equipment. They avoid the added operational complexity, they cut the risk of moving product between separate facilities, and they get to tap into our existing cold chain infrastructure rather than building and managing their own.”
As the company continues to expand its seafood solutions, Medearis explained that the company is advancing a “water-to-table model,” where seafood can move through multiple stages of the supply chain within a connected environment.
To learn more about Americold’s seafood solutions, click here.
