North Carolina’s Port of Wilmington’s focus on growing their perishables business is a chilling success.

The Port of Wilmington North Carolina continues to expand its role as a domestic cold chain player by focusing on growing temperature-controlled exports while strategically increasing refrigerated imports.

Almost ten years ago, Wilmington’s refrigerated import to export ratio was one to nine. Through a combination of infrastructure upgrades and private and public investment, that figure now sits at one to four, with a 235% increase in reefer cargo since 2016. Port leaders see potential to drive the ratio down even further and expand its business in the premium reefer cargo market.

“We are fortunate because North Carolina has a lot of cold exports, so the round trip is possible here for the carriers,” said Hans Bean, chief commercial officer for the North Carolina State Ports Authority which oversees Wilmington as well as the Port of Morehead City and an inland port in Charlotte. In addition to a huge agriculture industry worth upwards of $100 billion, “North Carolina has over 3,000 grocery retailers, and about a half dozen of them are headquartered here. But fresh produce was never getting to those stores or their distribution networks via a near gateway like Wilmington—it was always over the road from Philadelphia, Delaware or South Florida with very inflated costs. We saw that as an immediate focus to both serve and liberate our exports, but also to get a more optimal solution for fresh produce coming into the region. It’s also a very attractive segment for the ocean carriers so we wanted to showcase our capabilities and invest so that the carriers could make a bigger cold station here.”

1.5 Million sq/ft of Cold Storage

The Port of Wilmington and the surrounding near-Port area now boasts almost 1.5 million square feet of refrigerated warehousing, including notable facilities developed by Cold Summit Development and RL Cold—the latter operated by Performance Team—representing a combined $250 million in investment. Over the past eight years, North Carolina Ports has complemented this industry investment within the region by increasing its reefer plug count at the Port of Wilmington from 230 to 1,500. The plan is to increase that figure to 2,100 reefer plugs as demand warrants.

The message is simple: with North Carolina’s population and business community expanding rapidly, more consumers require year-round access to fruits, vegetables, and proteins. Officials say Wilmington is well positioned to help meet the demand while facilitating growth in the state’s refrigerated exports.

Bean said there is a pronounced “mid-Atlantic gap” in the cold chain and the Port of Wilmington fills it by serving as an efficient gateway for central U.S. and East Coast locations, saving customers time, money, and distance.

The Port of Wilmington’s tremendous cold chain growth and investment will be on display next month at the 8th annual Cold Chain Summit: Advancing Cold Solutions on Thursday, April 24th at the Hotel Ballast in Wilmington, N.C. Last year’s event drew more than 300 attendees from a wide variety of cold chain related industries: warehousing, trucking, shipping, technology and investment. Organizers expect an even bigger crowd in 2025.

“The Summit covers the gambit. Each year, we learn more and more and we’re getting the voices of industry there,” Bean said. “We cover a lot of industry subject matter, and it serves as an open forum to spotlight where solutions can happen and what different types of partners can help that happen.”

Near Port Investment

A year ago, American Blueberries LLC opened an APHIS-certified cold treatment facility just 18 miles from the Port of Wilmington. The retreatment facility was a game changer in the quest to lure more imported produce, Bean said. The facility serves as a back-up if in-transit cold treatment goes wrong for an ocean carrier. Bean said it has opened trade lanes for imported produce from Chile and Peru.

Near-port investment has continued to flow with a handful of food industry players — Acme Smoked Fish, Cardinal Foods and Russet House — locating facilities in close proximity to the Port. In addition, North Carolina’s booming life science industry provides big potential, Bean said, evidenced by the state-of-the-art facility being developed by Frontier Scientific Solutions, a temperature-controlled storage and transportation company, only a few miles from Port gates at Wilmington International Airport. This facility is supported by a $1.5 billion commitment from GID, a real estate investor, owner, operator and developer.

“North Carolina has probably the biggest life science segment density in the country with nearly 1000 life science companies in the Research Triangle,” Bean said. “Much of that supply chain is airfreight, but there are some conversions to ocean because there are a lot of transatlantic iterations on life science production.”

Bean said the entire Eastern North Carolina region is attracting refrigerated investment that may not directly affect the Port of Wilmington now, but it will help stamp the region as a cold chain cluster.

“There’s no doubt South Florida and Philadelphia will continue to be tremendous gateways for cold, but with the type of increases in cold flows that are being projected, there’s going to have to be more solutions and so that’s how we market Wilmington. It’s not about swapping business today. It’s about expanding within this growing segment,” Bean said.