Alaska Cargo and Cold Storage Expands Global Chain

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Image courtesy of Alaska Cargo and Cold Storage

Alaska Cargo and Cold Storage is looking to expand the distribution capacity at Alaska’s largest airport with a more than 700,000-square-foot cold storage facility.

The ACCS joint venture between industrialist Chad Brownstein and McKinley Capital Management signed the 55-year ground lease with the state of Alaska for development of the facility at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

Once completed, ACCS will offer 32.5 million cubic feet of capacity in both cold and warm storage, as well as quick cargo, general warehousing and logistics services capabilities. The facility will also provide office space for its tenants. The warehouse project has earned support from the Alaska Energy Authority, which was awarded a $21 million BUILD grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation in September 2020 to support the ACCS development.

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Construction on the cold storage facility is expected to start in the second half of 2021 and will be completed in phases. The first phase will create a roughly 190,000 square feet cold storage and climate-controlled air cargo transfer facility, while the second phase will construct an additional 525,000 square feet of quick cargo transfer and air cargo space, according to the Alaska Energy Authority. The state agency also said that the cold storage facility is expected to be complete and operational by the summer of 2022.

Adding value to Anchorage airport

Despite its position as the sixth-busiest cargo airport in the world, the Anchorage airport’s limited supply of warehouse and transfer facilities has led to a designation of “gas-and-go.”

However, Rob Gillam, CEO & CIO of McKinley Capital, said in prepared remarks that the ACCS development will allow the Anchorage airport to become a key cold chain transfer hub for global air cargo carriers. Cold storage facilities in general have become a more popular investment with the industrial and logistics sectors growing rapidly, according to a recent Elion Partners special report.

With ACCS being located within Anchorage airport, the facility will be situated within nine and a half hours from 90 percent of the key markets in Asia, Europe and North America. Gillam added that the cold storage facility would also allow Alaska to capitalize on its valuable location between North America and Asia.