Some of the world’s biggest players in cold storage are vying to build a multimillion-dollar warehouse on Portland’s waterfront, a project seen as a critical for supporting the city’s port and Maine’s growing food production industry.
The Maine Port Authority asked seven companies Wednesday to submit bids. The authority had vetted the companies for financial capacity and expertise. The companies include the world’s largest cold storage company, Americold Logistics LLC, which owns a billion cubic feet of cold storage space in six countries, and its rival, Lineage Logistics LLC, which owns 600,000 cubic feet of cold storage space. Americold has an outmoded cold storage facility on Read Street in Portland.
The companies’ interest shows that the warehouse project is commercially viable, said Jonathan Nass, chairman of the Maine Port Authority.
Other qualified bidders include Preferred Freezer Services, which owns more than 200 million cubic feet of cold storage space in the United States; Eimskip, an Icelandic company that operates container vessels out of Portland and also owns cold-storage warehouses; XTL Inc., a Philadelphia-based logistics company; and Wilmington Cold Storage Inc., which operates warehouses in Wilmington and Stoughton, Massachusetts.
One qualified bidder, Eastern Impact LLC of Portland, is the lead entity in a consortium that has been put together for the project.
The warehouse would be built on 6.3 acres of state-owned land just west of the Casco Bay Bridge. The project calls for a private company to build the facility and pay the Maine Port Authority rent on a long-term lease. The state wants bidders to submit their own ideas about the size and type of cold-storage facility. The site could support a warehouse as large as 120,000 square feet and with 12 truck bays.
The deadline for bid proposals is Aug. 24. Port Authority officials are moving quickly, hoping to select a winner soon so construction can begin next year.
