Coldbox, Griffico Design/Build claim CEBA awards
Coldbox and Griffco Design/Build recently earned the Controlled Environment Building Association’s 2022 Built by the Best awards.
CEBA, a partner to the Global Cold Chain Alliance, celebrated the companies during its annual conference earlier this month in Florida.
The association launched the Built by the Best awards in 2016 to recognize CEBA members’ “tremendous expertise” in building the chain. The award acknowledges project teams moving the industry forward in the design and construction of controlled-environment facilities.
Coldbox received the Built By the Best award for projects under $35 million for a facility built for Confederation Freezers in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Confederation Freezers saw demand for its business increase, so it needed additional space within its existing site to accommodate growing customer needs. The company hired Coldbox to expand and alter the facility by 109,000 sq. ft. to make it more practical. One challenge was Confederation Freezers needed to maintain full operation and service during construction. As a solution, Coldbox took a progressive design-build approach to ensure construction could happen without interuptting Confederation Freezers’ workers. With the finished facility, Coldbox was able to increase the company’s storage capacity by 50%, which helped it meet demand.
“Coldbox, Confederation Freezers, and all of the CEBA members [who] worked on the project, created a warehouse we can all be proud of,” said Paul D’Agostino, chief operations officer at Coldbox. “We look forward to continuing to grow and nurture our relationships with new and existing partners in the cold storage industry.”
Griffco Design/Build won the Built By the Best Award for projects over $35 million for its work on Phase I of Americold’s Gateway facility in Atlanta, Georgia, which is a 200,000-sq.-ft. Brownfield automated building that includes a 150-ft.-tall, minus 10-degree ASRS, minus 10 degree low-bay freezer, 35-degree truck and rail dock, and a two-story office building.
The ASRS includes 41,000 pallet positions and the low-bay freezer includes 6,000, totaling 47,000 pallet positions. The Griffco team demolished 440,000 of the 600,000 sq. ft. of existing refrigerated buildings originally built in the 1970s to clear the site for Phase I.
“Griffco is honored to receive the 2022 CEBA Built by the Best Award for our project with Americold,” said Scott Griffin, CEO at Griffco Design/Build. “We are immensely proud of the work we did, the partnership with Americold, and the relationships with all the CEBA suppliers who worked in partnership to construct this innovative facility.”
This year there were seven submissions for the award.
Three honorable mention submissions:
- ESI Group USA for the Ben E. Keith Foods food distribution facility in New Brockton, Alabama
- Primus Builders for the Cold Summit Development cold storage facility in Dallas, Texas
- Ryan Companies for the Kroger Co./Ocado automated grocery fulfillment center in Forest Park, Georgia
Four finalists:
- AM King for Mission Produce food distribution facility in Laredo, Texas
- Coldbox for the Confederation Freezers expansion project in Brantford, Ontario, Canada
- Fisher Construction Group for the Arctic Cold cold storage facility in Oxnard, California
- Griffco Design/Build for the Americold Gateway automated freezer facility project in Atlanta, Georgia
All submissions were vetted by a panel of judges that included Zach Norris, VP of Evans General Contracting; Rob Adams, EVP at Ti Cold; Burnie Taylor, chief development and solutions officer at Arcadia Cold Storage & Logistics; Mike Lynch, VP of engineering, U.S. Cold Storage; Charles Woolley, manager at Controlled Environment Systems; and Rob Brodsky, SVP at Stellar.
