European Cold Storage Expansion: How we grow in Europe

Expanding With Discipline, Not Aggression

One Frio was founded with a straightforward thesis: Europe's cold storage market is fragmented, and many well-run family businesses have the potential to grow further when supported with long-term investment, operational expertise, and access to a broader network.

That philosophy has shaped the company's expansion across the Netherlands and Ireland. Rather than pursuing rapid geographic coverage, each acquisition is assessed against a consistent operational framework designed to protect long-term value.

The criteria extend well beyond available warehouse capacity. A prospective facility must demonstrate strong operational standards, durable customer relationships, experienced local leadership, and infrastructure capable of supporting future investment. The quality of refrigeration assets, customer diversification, and strategic location all form part of the assessment.

Equally important is the willingness to decline opportunities that do not meet those standards.

"We grow carefully, because careful is how value is protected in this sector," says Co-Founder Aric Adams. "The aim is always to buy a good business at a sensible price and then back it to grow further. Size on its own has never been the goal."

That approach reflects a broader reality across infrastructure sectors. Successful European cold storage expansion creates value only when each additional facility strengthens the wider network. Buying facilities that don't fit the existing operating model can make them harder to manage, reduce consistency, and create unnecessary risk.

In cold storage, where facilities require significant ongoing capital investment and customers depend on reliable execution, disciplined growth often proves more valuable than rapid expansion.

Category and Geography: Our Decision Framework

Location has always been fundamental to logistics, but proximity alone is no longer enough. Increasingly, operators must consider how facilities function together as an interconnected network.

One Frio's concentration in the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK reflects that principle. Rather than building a widely dispersed portfolio, the company focuses on geographic density within markets where food production, imports, exports, and distribution corridors naturally overlap.

This concentration creates practical advantages across multiple areas of the business.

Facilities located within the same regional ecosystem can:

• Support customers across multiple locations through a consistent operating model.

• Share operational expertise and management attention more effectively.

• Strengthen relationships with equipment suppliers and energy providers.

• Improve resilience when demand fluctuates between facilities.

• Enable greater standardisation of reporting and service delivery.

The same disciplined thinking applies to customer categories.

Rather than chasing short-term utilisation, One Frio prioritises facilities serving food producers, processors, retailers and importers with predictable, year-round volumes. Service capability also matters. Operations offering value-added activities such as blast freezing, customs handling, tempering, repacking or cross-docking typically become more deeply embedded within customers' supply chains.

Those services strengthen relationships beyond simple pallet storage, reducing sensitivity to pricing alone while supporting operational continuity for customers.

Market selection involves broader considerations as well. Commercial opportunity is assessed alongside structural factors including energy availability, planning environments, labour markets and long-term regulatory conditions.

Some regions may present attractive acquisition opportunities on paper yet lack the infrastructure needed to support sustainable growth.

Rather than entering every available market, One Frio's strategy recognises that restraint can be an operational advantage.

How We Reduce Investor Risk Through Focus

Cold storage combines relatively stable demand with substantial operational complexity. While food consumption remains resilient through economic cycles, maintaining modern refrigerated infrastructure requires significant ongoing investment.

Two risks are particularly important when evaluating long-term performance.

The first is asset quality.

Refrigeration systems represent one of the largest capital commitments within the industry. Deferred maintenance or underinvestment may reduce costs temporarily, but often increases operational risk, energy consumption and future capital requirements.

Continuous investment helps safeguard operational efficiency while supporting consistent service quality.

The second is customer concentration.

Facilities that depend a lot on a small number of customers may appear successful during favourable market conditions, yet they remain vulnerable if major contracts are lost or production patterns change.

Diversification, therefore, becomes a fundamental element of resilience rather than a commercial goal.

One Frio addresses these risks through several interconnected principles:

• Maintaining a broad customer base across producers, processors and retailers.

• Continuing capital investment in facilities following acquisition.

• Retaining experienced local management teams wherever possible.

• Standardising operational reporting while preserving local expertise.

• Building density within existing markets instead of pursuing disconnected expansion.

Several ongoing investments illustrate this philosophy, including the automated expansion underway in Apeldoorn and continued investment in Lisburn. Beyond increasing capacity, these projects aim to improve operational efficiency, strengthen service capability and prepare facilities for long-term customer demand.

Leadership continuity remains equally important.

Operational excellence is rarely created solely through infrastructure. Relationships with customers, understanding of regional supply chains and day-to-day execution often reside with the management teams who have built these businesses over decades.

Preserving that knowledge while strengthening systems allows acquired businesses to retain their local strengths within a larger network.

The Future of European Cold Storage Expansion

Over the next three to five years, European cold storage expansion is likely to be shaped by several interconnected trends, including automation, sustainability, reporting requirements and changing customer expectations.

Automation will continue improving productivity within modern facilities. Sustainability requirements are likely to increase pressure on energy efficiency and refrigeration technology. Reporting expectations from customers and investors will become more sophisticated. Food manufacturers and retailers will increasingly favour logistics partners capable of delivering consistent standards across multiple locations.

These trends point toward a gradual shift from individual facilities operating independently to integrated regional networks.

One Frio's long-term strategy aligns with that direction.

Rather than pursuing expansion into numerous countries simultaneously, the focus remains on strengthening operational integration within existing markets. That includes deeper service alignment, more consistent reporting, shared operational standards and greater connectivity between facilities.

The objective is straightforward: enabling customers to move products across multiple sites while experiencing one consistent standard of service and one commercial relationship.

As Adams puts it:

"Assembling cold stores is the easy part. Running them well, as one group, while keeping what made each site good, is the part that matters."

That perspective reflects an increasingly important distinction within European logistics.

Infrastructure ownership alone creates limited value. As European cold storage expansion continues, long-term success will increasingly depend on disciplined capital allocation, strong operating systems and the ability to deliver consistent performance across an integrated network.

What This Strategy Unlocks for Stakeholders

As European food supply chains become more interconnected, resilience depends less on individual facilities and more on the strength of the networks connecting them.

For investors, disciplined expansion supports long-term value creation by combining operational improvement with measured risk management. Customer diversification, continued capital investment and geographic concentration all contribute to more durable performance over time.

For family-owned businesses considering succession, the model offers continuity alongside investment. Local expertise, established customer relationships and regional identities remain valuable assets rather than obstacles to integration.

For food producers, retailers and logistics partners, stronger networks translate into greater operational consistency. Facilities continue evolving through investment while maintaining the local knowledge that customers often rely upon.

Across all three groups, the underlying principle remains the same: strengthening existing businesses rather than replacing what already works.

The coming years are unlikely to reward expansion alone. They are more likely to reward operators capable of combining investment discipline, operational consistency and long-term partnership across increasingly complex supply chains.

The next chapter of European cold storage expansion is unlikely to be defined by who acquires the most facilities. It will be shaped by operators that build resilient networks, invest consistently and integrate businesses thoughtfully. As infrastructure continues to modernise, the organisations best positioned for the future will be those that strengthen Europe's food supply chains through disciplined, long-term growth.