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Cold is Hot

Warehouse Investment (But How?) As I mentioned in detail in my article, the demand for storage space is increasing due to the development of e-commerce, the preference for more near shoring production or supply in case a pandemic-like situation occurs again, and the need to keep more stock; the increase in storage space primary rental prices and also the lower cost of land cost and unit construction cost compared to other commercial real estate; shorter construction time, which means that income can be earned in a much shorter period of time; and the ability to easily and quickly convert warehouses into different business spaces, such as factories, wholesalers, outlets, etc., and use them for different purposes in a much longer period of time, making it much more attractive to invest in warehouses. According to Cushman & Wakefield Turkey’s “Turkey Real Estate Market Outlook Third Quarter, 2023” report, the industrial (factory, warehouse) market’s yield rate for the last 10 years is higher than the office and shopping mall markets.

In addition to this general approach to warehouses, special-purpose warehouses, such as warehouses for e-commerce and especially temperature-controlled warehouses, can be much more attractive than general-purpose warehouses.

Many products, especially food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, and some semi-finished products or raw materials must be stored in the correct temperature regime (frozen, cold, cool).

Factors such as population growth; more people living in cities; the growth of the middle class, resulting in more meals being eaten outside the home; more travel for touristic purposes; more emphasis on grooming and appearance; and the increase in the number of diseases in the modern age have increased (are increasing) the demand for food, medicine and cosmetics that require temperature control.

With 85 million inhabitants and a population that grows by roughly 600,000 people every year, is the temperature-controlled storage infrastructure required for products that require temperature control to be consumed by this many people in Turkey adequate? Unfortunately, there is no data to answer this.

However, we can learn that there are 904 temperature-controlled storage areas in the USA with a capacity of 106 million cubic meters, 78% of which are frozen (72% of the total cubic meters and 58% of the total number belong to companies providing storage services) or that there are 700 temperature-controlled storage areas in the UK with a size of approximately 13.5 million square meters on 4,500 square meters (unlike the USA, 23% of the total square meters and 27% of the total number belong to companies providing storage services) after a very simple search on search engines.1.

According to my observations, the vast majority of storage for temperature-controlled products is done by their manufacturers, sellers, importers, wholesalers, restaurant chains, etc. These companies either build temperature-controlled storage themselves or rent a storage area for a long period of time, make it suitable for temperature-controlled storage and operate it themselves.

0.20 cubic meters of temperature-controlled storage per person in Germany and 0.45 cubic meters per person in the UK2 Based on the average of temperature-controlled storage data, Turkey should have about 28 million cubic meters of temperature-controlled storage space and about 195,000 cubic meters should be added every year. Cold (temperature controlled) warehouses are hot to invest in.

  1. United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics, Capacity of Refrigerated
    Warehouses and the UK Cold Storage Sector, Savills ↩︎
  2. 2020 GCCA Global Cold Storage Capacity Report and Cold storage market blows hot, Savills ↩︎