From Six Sites to a Scalable European Platform: How One Frio Is Building for Long-Term Value
Is Europe’s cold storage market fragmented and capital-intensive-or an overlooked opportunity waiting for the right operator to unlock its potential? One Frio was founded on a clear conviction: Europe represents the latter. From the outset, the company set out to build a scalable, pan-European cold storage platform grounded in deep operational understanding, disciplined execution, and long-term stewardship. Several structural trends reinforce that belief. Cross-border trade continues to expand. Regulatory requirements around temperature control are becoming more stringent. Demand across protein, fresh produce, and pharmaceutical supply chains is accelerating. Together, these forces make a compelling case for purpose-built, modern cold storage infrastructure-delivered at scale, without compromising local expertise. This article explores how One Frio built its initial network, what differentiates the platform operationally, and how the next phase of growth is being shaped. Is Europe’s cold storage market fragmented and capital-intensive or an overlooked opportunity waiting for the right operator to unlock its potential? One Frio was founded on a clear conviction: that Europe represents the latter. The company set out to build a scalable, pan-European cold storage platform grounded in deep operational expertise and disciplined execution. Several structural trends reinforced that belief. Cross-border trade continues to expand, regulatory requirements around temperature control are becoming more stringent, and demand across protein, fresh produce, and pharmaceutical supply chains is accelerating. Together, these forces create a compelling case for purpose-built, modern cold storage infrastructure. We sit down with Aric Adams, founder of One Frio, to explore how the company built its initial network, what differentiates the platform operationally, and how the next phase of growth is being shaped.
How and why did One Frio build a multi-site network?
The European cold storage market differs fundamentally from its North American counterpart. While the United States is dominated by a small number of large, institutional operators, Europe continues to be shaped by a broad base of family-owned and smaller independent businesses, many of which have operated successfully at the local and regional level for decades.
These companies play a critical role in European supply chains. They support exporters, retailers, and processors with specialized, high-service offerings-often delivering strong operational performance, but without the benefit of shared systems, institutional tooling, or regional coordination.
From the beginning, One Frio was not built around growth for growth’s sake. Instead, the founders defined a clear objective: identify best-in-class family-owned operators and bring them together under a single platform designed to strengthen performance, resilience, and long-term competitiveness.
This approach aligns with broader market signals. Industry research consistently shows that cold-chain resilience increasingly depends on integration-coordinated investment in infrastructure, systems, compliance, and workforce capability. Fragmented ownership, by contrast, can limit the ability to respond to regulatory change, customer consolidation, and rising service expectations.
The First Six Sites: A Deliberate Foundation
One Frio’s first six sites are located across the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, with a deliberate focus on two core segments: protein and fresh produce.
While the facilities vary in size and specialization, they share several defining characteristics:
Established, profitable operations with long-standing customer relationships
Strong local or regional market positions prior to acquisition
Family-owned, generational businesses seeking a trusted long-term partner
The platform began with the acquisition of an anchor facility in the Netherlands, recognized for its scale, modern infrastructure, and operational quality. That first transaction provided both a blueprint and a reference point. From there, One Frio added five complementary sites, broadening its service mix, customer base, and geographic footprint.
This portfolio composition is intentional. A multi-site footprint allows One Frio to serve a wide range of customer needs while maintaining operational focus and accountability at the facility level.
Why do these six sites form a strong base?
The strength of One Frio’s foundation is best understood through performance data.
Across the network, occupancy levels consistently exceed industry norms. While average cold storage utilization in Europe typically sits around 80 percent, all six One Frio sites operate at approximately 90 to 95 percent occupancy.
Occupancy alone, however, is only part of the story. Financial performance per pallet-a more sophisticated indicator of operational quality-has also been exceptional, particularly at scale.
Equally important is service depth. One Frio’s facilities are not commodity pallet-in, pallet-out warehouses. They provide value-added services such as repacking, blast freezing, export preparation, and customs administration-positioning them as embedded partners within customers’ supply chains.
As regulatory requirements tighten, these capabilities increase switching costs and reduce substitution risk, especially for customers requiring GDP certification or ultra-low-temperature handling.
A Disciplined Approach to Standardized Modernization
Modernization is often framed as a binary choice: enforce rigid standardization or preserve full local autonomy. One Frio’s operating model is designed to avoid that false trade-off.
At the site level, day-to-day operations remain under the control of local managers who understand regional labor markets, customer relationships, and operating norms. At the regional level, shared resources support finance, IT, commercial strategy, and systems implementation.
Centralizing tools-rather than decision-making-allows facilities to operate more efficiently while preserving the local expertise that underpins customer relationships and service quality.
This structure enables rapid replication of proven improvements. Once a system or process is optimized at one facility, it can be rolled out across the network-driving consistency where it adds value, without imposing uniformity where it does not.
Technology plays a central role. The adoption of IoT sensors, cloud-based temperature monitoring, and AI-driven predictive analytics improves visibility, reduces waste, and strengthens compliance by identifying anomalies and maintenance risks before they escalate.
The operational levers behind scalability
One Frio’s ability to scale without eroding service quality rests on three core operational levers.
First: data integration.
Customer data and sales pipelines, once siloed at individual sites, are now consolidated into a single platform. This enables cross-selling, improves inbound lead management, and provides a pan-European view of customer demand.
Second: service density.
While many large operators remain focused on basic storage, One Frio derives a meaningful share of revenue from integrated services that function more like turnkey production environments. Protein repacking, blast freezing, and export handling increase revenue per pallet and deepen customer integration.
Third: people and continuity.
Cold storage remains a people-intensive business, particularly in specialized operations. One Frio prioritizes workforce stability, gradual integration, and respect for local leadership.
The objective is straightforward: ensure that every business that joins the platform is stronger five or ten years later than it would have been on its own.
Looking ahead
The next phase of One Frio’s growth will focus on deeper integration rather than unchecked expansion. Continued alignment across systems, commercial processes, and customer engagement is expected to drive further efficiency and service improvement at the platform level.
At the same time, acquisition discipline remains central. Growth will continue to be selective, focused on specific categories, regions, and service profiles that strengthen the overall platform.
For investors, the message is clear: One Frio is building durable, long-term value rather than pursuing a near-term exit.
For business owners considering succession, the message is equally deliberate. Growth, in this model, is not about erasing legacy-it is about safeguarding it through capital, systems, and continuity.
As European food supply chains continue to evolve, platforms that successfully combine local excellence with regional coordination are likely to play an outsized role. One Frio’s first six sites offer a clear example of how that balance can be built.