BGO Cold Chain is one of the world's largest cold-storage investors, but it has just recently opened its first facility in Canada for operator Martin Brower at the Northwood Business Park in Oshawa, Ont.

The facility was developed in partnership with Stonemont Financial Group.

BGO Cold Chain is part of global real estate investment management advisor and real estate services provider BGO. It’s a dedicated business line representing cold-storage real estate investment management, asset management and development activity on behalf of its institutional investors.

BGO Cold Chain has been involved in approximately 30 million square feet of transaction activity since 2015.

“In North America we have a focused business solely around development of cold-chain assets,” managing partner and head of North America for BGO Cold Chain Kevin Rivest told RENX. “We have a specific fund that we invest out of that is solely focused on cold storage.

"A very significant majority of the assets in the fund we have developed from the ground up in various partnerships with different developers, and we also have the ability to develop ourselves.”

There are 24 assets with a total project cost of US$1.6 billion in the BGO U.S. Cold Storage Fund, which the Oshawa facility is part of. It has developed cold-storage facilities on both build-to-suit and speculative bases.

“Cold storage is a really critical part of our overall food supply chain, which has certainly come more in focus over the last several years between the supply chain issues coming out of COVID and more focus on supply chain, food prices, food security and food insecurity,” said Rivest, who is based in Washington, D.C. 

“It's certainly become a lot more of a focus for institutional real estate investors. Whether it's grown as a percentage of the overall industrial base, probably not really because of the absolute boom and continued development of general industrial for e-commerce, et cetera. But there's certainly been large growth in the development of new cold storage.”

Stonemont and Martin Brower

Atlanta, Ga.-headquartered Stonemont is a private real estate investment firm that has invested US$20 billion in a range of asset classes over its more-than-60-year history. It currently has more than US$5 billion in assets under management.

Stonemont and BGO coordinated the site acquisition, design and development of the Oshawa cold-storage facility. Panattoni Development Company Canada was the local development partner and Nexrock Design Build Inc. was the general contractor.

Rosemont, Ill.-headquartered Martin Brower was founded in 1934 and has become a supply chain operator for some of the world’s leading food brands. It has operated in Canada since 1972 and serves as the sole supplier for the  McDonald's restaurant chain across the country. This new facility will service more than 200 McDonald’s locations across eastern Ontario.

This is the first joint venture project between BGO and Stonemont, which has Martin Brower as a tenant in buildings it owns in the United States, according to Rivest.

What the Oshawa facility offers

Ground was broken for the Oshawa build-to-suit project in the second quarter of 2023. Although the opening was only recently announced, Martin Brower has been operating in the 172,034-square-foot Northwood Business Park facility since late 2024.

“It varies based on size and complexity, like any project, but if a regular ambient temperature warehouse takes eight to 10 months to build, a cold storage project is generally 11 to 15 months,” Rivest explained. “And if it's very large and has automation and other things that are more technically complex, then it could push a little farther than that to be completely operational.”

The building is located on 16.86 acres at 650 Conlin Rd. W. It offers 40-foot clear heights, 37 dock doors, two drive-in doors, 130 trailer parking spaces and 125 car parking spaces. The facility will bring 175 jobs to the community.

“The refrigeration system is CO2-based, which is much more environmentally friendly and also very efficient for energy usage,” Rivest said. 

Building new facilities is the better way to go

A lot of older cold-storage facilities are inefficient and there’s a need for modernization to keep up with current needs and trends. While they can be retrofitted and upgraded, or new additions can be made to existing buildings where space allows, Rivest thinks it generally makes more sense to build new ones wherever possible so the highest standards can be achieved.

“We don't necessarily think of frozen foods as especially healthy, but the reality is that there is quite a bit of advancement in freezing technologies and in the ability to flash-freeze foods — whether they be proteins, fruits, vegetables, et cetera — to maintain all their nutritional value and be stored and then ultimately packaged and sold in a pretty economical way,” he said.

BGO Cold Chain plans to invest further in Canadian facilities, but Rivest said he couldn’t be more specific about future projects at this point.