Worldwide cold storage capacity increased last year

The total capacity of refrigerated warehouses worldwide reached 600 million cubic meters in 2016, an increase of 8.6% from 2014. The global growth rate since 2014 was 4.2% on an annual compound basis. China was the leading location of new construction, with 31 million cubic meters of additional space reported. India was the largest single country market, at 141 million cubic meters total. Along with India, the Unites States, and China each had more than 100 million cubic meters of refrigerated warehouse capacity as of 2016, according to the?Global Cold Chain Alliance(GCCA). Among the smaller country markets, Uzbekistan, Turkey and Mexico reported substantial capacity growth, by 1.6 million cubic meters in Mexico and 2.4 million cubic meters in Turkey and Uzbekistan. In North Africa, the total refrigerated warehouse space was 6 million cubic meters larger in 2016 than that reported in 2014, an increase of 4.6% since 2014. The United States industry accounted for 3.2 million cubic meters of capacity. Some of the increase in refrigerated warehouse capacity is attributable to reporting from countries that had not previously been included in the database. Reporting changes accounted for approximately 11 million cubic meters of the capacity additions to the GCCA database. The new countries reported were South Korea, Peru, Mauritius, Ecuador and Kenya.Refrigerated warehouse capacity levels in most European countries fell in 2016 compared with 2014. Cold storage capacity in Europe totaled 112 million cubic meters. Turkey and Great Britain were exceptions to the downward trend. In Turkey, over 2.4 million cubic meters of new construction occurred over the last two years. Total capacity reported for Great Britain was 32 million cubic meters, a substantial increase due in part to better information on the privately operated warehouses. The public, for-hire segment of the market in Great Britain was estimated at 7 to 8 million cubic meters, or approximately 23% of the national capacity.