Coaldale’s NewCold facility to open in June

Southern Alberta Newspapers Photo by Kristine Jean. OPENING SOON: Coaldale’s NewCold facility will be open for business in June. The $222 million food storage warehouse began construction last fall and will be fully operational by the summer, with a grand opening scheduled for later this year.

By Kristine Jean
Southern Alberta Newspapers

Coaldale’s NewCold facility will be open for business in late June, with a grand opening scheduled for later this year. 

The $222 million state-of-the-art food storage warehouse began construction last fall and is set to be fully operational this summer. 

NewCold is one of the world’s largest, advanced automated warehouse and cold chain logistics companies, founded in the Netherlands in 2012. Its first Canadian facility, located in southern Alberta, is expected to service all of Canada and possibly international markets.  

Area site manager for NewCold’s Coaldale location, Derek Bedke, recently sat down with Southern Alberta Newspapers for an update on the facility’s progress.    

“We are very excited to be setting up this facility in the Town of Coaldale. We’re excited about the workforce, we’re excited for the opportunities it’s going to bring and we will be ready,” said Bedke. “There is a wonderful sense of community here.”   

Bedke said although they will have an anchor customer for the Coaldale location, which is undisclosed at this time, the warehouse will be a multi-customer facility that will bring in frozen product and store it at the Coaldale location. He noted the warehouse’s proximity to many food producers in the area that had a need for storage. 

“If there is need for frozen storage and it meets a certain quantity threshold, then for sure we would be able to help out,” said Bedke, noting items such as frozen vegetables, seafood or other items. “(At) our Tacoma, Washington facility, Trident seafood is their anchor customer.          

“There will be a lot of product shipped in and out of this (Coaldale) facility,” he added.   

There are a total of four NewCold storage facilites in the United States, including ones in Tacoma, Washington, Burley, Idaho, Indianapolis, Indiana and Atlanta, Georgia. NewCold’s U.S. headquarters is stationed in Chicago, Illinois.  

Bedke oversees the day to day operations at both the Burley, Idaho and the Coaldale, Alberta locations and said they have already filled several upper management and other positions, and are currently looking to hire several more people for a variety of jobs at the Coaldale location, including forklift drivers, system planners, order selectors, system operators, yard drivers, stock control associates and maintenance techs. Everyone will need to be hired and trained before they go live in June. 

The Coaldale facility will include automation and will operate 24-hours around the clock, seven days a week. It is expected to have about 80 employees in total. 

“We need forklift drivers that can handle all the movements of the palettes, we need people to run the automation – we have operators that monitor the entire system and if there’s an issue, they run out to the problem and get it fixed,” said Bedke. “We have a maintenance team that will make sure everything is maintained and that everything is running properly.”  

Bedke pointed out the good, hardworking people that have been found in this region.  

“The core management team has been identified and hired and they’re in various states of their training,” he said. “We also have a quality, environmental, safety and health (QUESH) individual that has been hired. We’re currently recruiting for our finance controller and a customer service dock control position.” 

The warehouse will hold up to 58,000 pallets at one time, moving both inbound and outbound via ground transportation and rail car. Each palette will hold about two thousands pounds of frozen product. The large area inside the facility where everything will be stored, is called the high bay, which will see a total of six cranes moving product back and forth inside the structure. Outside the facility will be a drop yard, a large area that will hold more than 100 trucks at one time. 

Bedke noted progress on the facility’s construction has seen some challenges, but is on schedule for its opening this summer.  

“There have been challenges weather-wise,” he said, noting recent progress made both inside and outside the building. “They’re really close with the offices and they’re getting the exterior done,” added Bedke. “All the conveyance systems are in and they’re getting commissioned. The high bay is getting built and we’ll get the cranes installed.” 

He spoke about the state-of-the-art technology that will be used at the Coaldale facility and how it will positively impact the its operations, including overall efficiency.   

“It’s exciting. It’s very state of the art, a lot of it is computer-driven, it’s robotics … mainly automation when it comes to palette conveyance (and) cranes,” said Bedke. “You can probably do the same amount of work as a conventional storage warehouse with about a fifth – 20 per cent of the size and about 20 per cent of the workforce and 20 per cent of the forklifts … so you can get a lot more done with the square footage that we have,” he added, noting that less energy is also used compared with that of a commercial warehouse as well. 

In addition, Bedke noted efficiencies with how trucks will be loaded and unloaded at the Coaldale facility, using automated truck loading and automated truck unloading technology. 

“What we generally try to shoot for is that a truck and driver is here and then out of here within two hours (with completed paperwork). That’s the metric that keeps everybody smiling,” said Bedke, adding they could see about 60 trucks inbound and the same number outbound on a daily basis. 

A grand-opening of the Coaldale facility is expected to be held later this year.