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Company type | Public company |
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Headquarters | Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
Number of locations | 250 |
Number of employees | 16,275 (December 31, 2021) |
Website | americold |
Americold Realty Trust, Inc. is an American temperature controlled warehousing and transportation company based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is in the business of modern commercialized temperature controlled warehousing for the storage of perishable goods, one of the forms of food preservation. Americold is the 2nd largest temperature-controlled warehousing and distribution services provider in the world. [1] [2] [3]
Cold storage companies began to appear when food preservation using ice became commercialized. Ice was farmed from lakes during the winter, and stored, surrounded by straw to insulate it, so that it could be used well into early summer. Ice houses and ice warehouses began to appear and sold blocks of ice for domestic and commercial use. Then in 1922, Clarence Birdseye founded the modern frozen food industry, by pioneering fast freezing (now called blast freezing), based on learning the benefits of low temperature freezing of fish practiced by the Inuit in Arctic regions.
Americold's history began in the early 20th century, around the time of the first ice and coal companies. Americold came from mergers and acquisitions involving Atlanta Ice and Coal Company, Atlanta City Brewing Company (later known as Atlanta Brewing and Ice Company,) Versacold, Munford, Jackson Atlantic, United Refrigerated Services, Atlas Cold Storage, and others.
In 1903, entrepreneur Ernest Woodruff merged three cold storage warehouses to form Atlanta Ice and Coal Company and in 1909 renamed the company Atlantic Ice and Coal as part of a large consolidation of ice and coal companies throughout the eastern states. In 1919, Woodruff bought [4] the Coca-Cola Company from Asa Candler’s children for $25,000,000.
In 1935, Atlantic Ice & Coal Company changed names to Atlantic Company [5] and began to expand into a variety of different businesses, including cold storage and beer production, the latter contributing up to 50% of the company's revenues at its peak.
Atlantic Company diversified into ice convenience store development under the name EZ stores, before household refrigerators were commonplace. It also ran a fast food operation called Wishbone Fried Chicken.[ citation needed ]
Atlantic Company merged with Munford Do it Yourself stores and became Atlantic-Munford, rapidly developing its convenience store growth. [6]
The company then merged with Jackson Minit Market and Handy Andy, and was renamed Jackson Atlantic, growing to 40 warehouses in the USA. It was one of the largest warehouse networks at that time. The company went public in 1968 and a few years later merged with United Refrigerated Services. The company then set out to develop the USA's most comprehensive cold storage network.[ citation needed ]
Atlanta became the company's home again in the early 1980s.[ citation needed ]
Acquisitions and mergers continued during the 1980s and 1990s with the company's current name, Americold, appearing in 1997.[ citation needed ]
In 2010, Americold acquired Versacold to become the largest temperature-controlled warehousing and distribution services provider in the world. [7]
in 2020, Americold acquired Agromerchants the fourth largest temperature-controlled warehousing in the world.
Americold provides temperature-controlled warehousing along with consolidation and multi-vendor consolidation transportation programs.[ citation needed ] Value added services complement typical warehousing and distribution services and include blast freezing, pick n pack,[ clarification needed ] labeling/relabeling, repacking, kitting, staging, cross-dock, sloughing/tempering, plus light assembly and food processing services. Americold owns and operates over 245 temperature-controlled warehouses, with more than 1 billion cubic feet of storage, in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, China, Argentina, and Canada. Americold's warehouses are a part of the supply chain connecting food producers, processors, distributors, and retailers to consumers.
Americold has more than 245 locations [8] worldwide.
Americold owns and operates a quarry in Carthage Underground both for the stone excavated and using the caverns and refrigerated storage chambers.[ citation needed ]
Refrigeration is any of various types of cooling of a space, substance, or system to lower and/or maintain its temperature below the ambient one. Refrigeration is an artificial, or human-made, cooling method.
Food storage is a way of decreasing the variability of the food supply in the face of natural, inevitable variability. It allows food to be eaten for some time after harvest rather than solely immediately. It is both a traditional domestic skill and, in the form of food logistics, an important industrial and commercial activity. Food preservation, storage, and transport, including timely delivery to consumers, are important to food security, especially for the majority of people throughout the world who rely on others to produce their food.
Freezing food preserves it from the time it is prepared to the time it is eaten. Since early times, farmers, fishermen, and trappers have preserved grains and produce in unheated buildings during the winter season. Freezing food slows decomposition by turning residual moisture into ice, inhibiting the growth of most bacterial species. In the food commodity industry, there are two processes: mechanical and cryogenic. The freezing kinetics is important to preserve the food quality and texture. Quicker freezing generates smaller ice crystals and maintains cellular structure. Cryogenic freezing is the quickest freezing technology available due to the ultra low liquid nitrogen temperature −196 °C (−320 °F).
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The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational corporation founded in 1892. It manufactures, sells and markets soft drinks including Coca-Cola, other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, and alcoholic beverages. Its stock is listed on the NYSE and is part of the DJIA and the S&P 500 and S&P 100 indexes.
A refrigerator, colloquially fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump that transfers heat from its inside to its external environment so that its inside is cooled to a temperature below the room temperature. Refrigeration is an essential food storage technique around the world. The low temperature lowers the reproduction rate of bacteria, so the refrigerator reduces the rate of spoilage. A refrigerator maintains a temperature a few degrees above the freezing point of water. The optimal temperature range for perishable food storage is 3 to 5 °C. A freezer is a specialized refrigerator, or portion of a refrigerator, that maintains its contents’ temperature below the freezing point of water. The refrigerator replaced the icebox, which had been a common household appliance for almost a century and a half. The United States Food and Drug Administration recommends that the refrigerator be kept at or below 4 °C (40 °F) and that the freezer be regulated at −18 °C (0 °F).
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Robert Winship Woodruff was an American businessman who served as the president of The Coca-Cola Company from 1923 until 1985. With a large net worth, he was also a major philanthropist, and many educational and cultural landmarks in the U.S. city of Atlanta, Georgia, bear his name. Included among these are the Woodruff Arts Center, Woodruff Park, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library.
Cold chain is a set of rules and procedures that ensure the systematic coordination of activities for ensuring temperature-control of goods while in storage and transit. The objective of a cold chain is to preserve the integrity and quality of goods such as pharmaceutical products or perishable good from production to consumption. Cold chain management earned its name as a "chain" because it involves linking a set of storage locations and special transport equipment, required for ensuring that temperature conditions for goods are met, while they are in storage or in transit from production to consumption, akin to the interconnected links of a physical chain.
An icemaker, ice generator, or ice machine may refer to either a consumer device for making ice, found inside a home freezer; a stand-alone appliance for making ice, or an industrial machine for making ice on a large scale. The term "ice machine" usually refers to the stand-alone appliance.
Ernest Woodruff was an American businessman from Atlanta, Georgia.
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The International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW) is an inter-warehouse organization. Founded in 1891, IARW was created when a group of conventional (non-refrigerated) warehouse owners began sharing knowledge about storing perishable food. As perishable food storage is complex, this organization soon became known industry-wide for their expertise about temperature controlled storage facilities.
Cold Storage is a Singaporean multinational supermarket company currently owned by DFI Retail Group. Its parent company also operates Market Place stores, now branded as Cold Storage Fresh, as well as the Giant hypermarket brand, and has various other supermarkets around Asia including Hero and Wellcome.
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Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Foods, Inc., 577 U.S. ___ (2016), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States clarified rules for determining whether a federal court may exercise diversity jurisdiction in cases involving unincorporated organizations. The case began as a contract dispute between food producers and a warehouse owner when millions of tons of stored food were destroyed in a warehouse fire. A federal trial court initially ruled in favor of the warehouse owner, but on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the federal district court may not have had jurisdiction. The Tenth Circuit held that the warehouse owner, a real estate investment trust ("REIT"), should be treated as an unincorporated organization and the district court should not be allowed to exercise diversity jurisdiction without examining the citizenship of the members of the real estate investment trust. The warehouse owner appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted certiorari to resolve a circuit split "regarding the citizenship of unincorporated entities."
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