A Netherlands-based provider of automated cold storage warehouses is set to invest $333 million in Henry County, constituting the largest-ever single economic development project in its history.
NewCold Logistics plans to hire 170 at the new facility in the Midland Industrial Park in McDonough.
NewCold has been building out a fulfillment network that minimizes human activity and emphasizes speed to market through the deployment of the latest technologies, saving customers time, money and environmental impact. The company’s North American base is in Chicago, but is building or operating three facilities in Washington, Indiana and Idaho.
The latter of the three, located in the Idaho city of Burley, stands 140 feet high and contains enough space for 90,000 block pallets. It on a 24/7 schedule and includes 12 semi-truck bays and seven automated stacker cranes.
The Henry County site would be NewCold’s first in the Southeast U.S.
As e-commerce heats up, the county straddling Interstate 75 southeast of Atlanta has become a hotbed for fulfillment centers thanks to its prime placement on the periphery of a metro area of 6 million. Henry County also sits on the well-worn trucking corridor between the fourth busiest container port in the nation in Savannah and the world’s busiest airport at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
NewCold’s global network includes facilities in France, Italy, Poland, Germany, Sweden and Portugal within Europe, in addition to two in Melbourne, Australia.
The Georgia announcement comes on the heels of a Dutch greenhouse delegation and the recent announcement of a $120 million vertical farming operation run by Netherlands-affiliated 80 Acres in Covington, east of Atlanta.
Gov. Brian Kemp used the his announcement of NewCold to tout the state’s ranking as the No. 1 state for business for nine years running by Site Selection magazine, noting that Georgia would “continue to recruit diverse industries that build on each other’s strengths so that we remain a destination state for job creators for years to come.”
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