Maersk Line, already the Port of Charleston's biggest customer, plans to operate a cold-storage distribution center in Ridgeville as part of its strategy to boost cargo and offer customers end-to-end services in supply chain operations.

The 300,000-square-foot center on 37 acres at Santee Cooper's Camp Hall Commerce Park, scheduled to open during the first quarter of 2023, is expected to increase the number of cargo containers filled with meat and produce moving through the port's terminals.

Such freight has doubled over the past decade to nearly 37,000 20-foot containers per year, and growth in the Southeast market has refrigerated cargo shippers eyeing the Charleston region as a key hub for future growth. 

"We have been evaluating South Atlantic cold chain market opportunities for the past three years, and this opportunity stood out in a strong way for a number of good reasons," said Mike Meierkort, head of logistics and services for Maersk North America. "The South Atlantic is one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation and we see lots of business opportunities thanks to a competitive port that we can connect our logistics and services with all our brands here — Maersk, Hamburg Sud and Sealand."

The distribution center will handle poultry, pork and beef along with dairy products and packaged foods for export, while imports will include beef, seafood, fruits and vegetables, said Diogo Lobo, Maersk's head of cold chain logistics and services. Imports of products like beef and lamb from Australia will serve mostly Carolinas customers.

The center will also have a 20,000-square-foot repackaging center for products to be delivered straight to grocery retailers.

"We know there is some interest in importing fresh fruit and vegetables into Charleston," Lobo said. "We need to collaborate with some of the potential customers on services needed and to reach critical mass to make fresh fruit and vegetables viable for the site."

The distribution center is part of Maersk's push into offering logistics services beyond the container ships it's been known for. The company accounts for nearly one-fifth of the State Ports Authority's revenues, and Lobo said the new facility "will definitely generate more" local waterborne cargo, adding further details will be available as the site gets closer to opening.

Maersk CEO Soren Skou told analysts during an Aug. 3 conference call that "growth in logistics is the single-biggest opportunity" for the company this decade. Revenues from that sector surged 61 percent to $3.5 billion in the second quarter, according to the company's earnings report. About 25 percent of that increase came from Maersk's growing network of warehouses throughout North America.

The Ridgeville facility will be the Danish company's first warehouse in South Carolina.  

"At some point in this decade, we will have a bigger business in logistics than we have in ocean," Skou told analysts.

Maersk is partnering with RL Cold, a division of Greenville-based real estate developer RealtyLink, on the Berkeley County project. The Upstate firm has more than a dozen cold-storage warehouses under development from the East Coast to Texas, according to the company's website.

“There’s so much demand, and this is something that’s critical,” Thomas Eldridge, founding principal and president of RL Cold, told The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reported that nearly 3.3 million square feet of cold-storage space is under construction nationwide — nearly 1,000 percent more than in 2019 before the pandemic hit.

“It’s vital for our economy. ... Everyone has to eat," Eldridge said. "We have not experienced any slowdown at all. If anything, it’s picked up.”

Several other cold-storage warehouses are planned for the Charleston region.

New Jersey-based Saxum Real Estate Development and Investment Co. plans to build two totaling nearly 400,000 square feet at the Ridgeville Industrial Campus, which is being developed by the State Ports Authority. Charleston-based Flexspace has filed plans for a 151,600-square-foot site in Dorchester County, and industry leader Lineage Logistics recently spent $34 million on an expansion of its nearly 320,000-square-foot North Charleston warehouse. Americold also operates a 130,000-square-foot cold-storage warehouse in Summerville.

The SPA has spent more than $20 million on upgrades to its refrigerated container services and has capacity for nearly 2,200 cold-storage containers at any one time at its terminals in Mount Pleasant and North Charleston. 

U.S. exports of meat are "a rising standard-of-living product around the world," said Byron Miller, the SPA's director of sales, who notes poultry and pork exports have grown along with middle- and upper-income populations in countries like China. At the same time, there is more demand for South American-grown fresh fruits and berries in the Southeast U.S. Those commodities used to be shipped through warehouses in Florida or the Northeast, but more are arriving in the Carolinas.

"You've seen a lot of retailers expanding their cold chain in the South," Miller said, adding that discharging cargo closer to where it will be consumed makes economic sense.

Barbara Melvin, the SPA's president and CEO, said the Maersk warehouse "will be a major extension into the Southeast cold chain market," adding that it "will help boost agricultural exports, further supporting our state's farmers and the agricultural sector."

"And it will enable South Carolina ports to handle more refrigerated grocery items for major retailers, which is a big goal of ours right now," she said. 

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Reach David Wren at 843-937-5550 or on Twitter at @David_Wren_

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