Manfredi Cold Storage sees growth with pandemic shifts

Beating the pandemic odds, Toughkenamon, Pa.-based Manfredi Cold Storage & Distribution is in expansion mode, says President Frank Manfredi.

Despite industry challenges with labor, trucks and COVID-19 protocols, the company has come through the pandemic stronger. Part of that success, Manfredi said, was the way the company embraced necessary COVID-19 protocols.

Workers who tested positive were sidelined for a time, but most came back to work without having any severe symptoms.

“Everybody had a sigh of relief that [COVID-19] just wasn’t going to kill you,” he said. “We found issues, we isolated those issues and the people came back to work. We were very fortunate to have that (COVID-19 response) team in place to do that for us. Everyone benefited companywide, including our customers.”

Business boost

West Coast port congestion has resulted in more ships routed to the East Coast to unload in recent months, and that has boosted business at the company, Manfredi said.

“The growth over the last three or four months because of the West Coast port issues [has] been amazing,” Manfredi said. An active import season for grapes and other deciduous fruit from South America over the winter will give way to big expected volume of citrus imports in the spring and summer.

“The citrus deal looks like it's going to be significant this year because of the issues in Texas, California and Florida,” he said.

The firm has easy access to ports on the Delaware River, the largest terminal for fruit imports in the U.S., receiving fruit from the Port of Wilmington, the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal, Penn Terminal and Holt Terminal, among others.

“More volume came to the East Coast than we ever anticipated,” he said. 

Located near Kennett Square, Pa., the company’s 450,000-square-foot, temperature-controlled warehouse ranges from 0 to 55°F. The facility and racking installation allows customers to pick by pallet for all shipments. The 48-acre site in Pennsylvania can handle 30,000 pallets at one time, Manfredi said.

“We’re very fortunate because of the size of our facility,” Manfredi said. “We're still bringing fruit into the facility, and we've been able to accommodate our existing customers.”

Finding space for new customers seeking cold storage is more challenging. 

“All in all, the good news for us to the labor market for us is probably softened up in the last two months we're able to get extra people into work,” he said. 

Finding equipment necessary for warehouse operations is challenging, he said. For example, new forklifts or pallet jacks can take as much as a year to deliver from manufacturers.

Beyond that, firms that rent pallet jacks and forklifts don’t want to sell their inventory because they are making so much money renting the equipment, Manfredi said.

Expansion mode

Last July, the company opened a new 150,000-square-foot facility on 52 acres across the Delaware River in New Jersey. 

“Two weeks after we opened the (New Jersey) facility, we realized it wasn't big enough and shovels were in the ground two months later for another 50,000-square-foot addition,” Manfredi said. The site has room to eventually expand to as much as 600,000 square feet, he said.

The 50,000-square-foot expansion will give Manfredi room for another 2,000 pallets, 15,000 square feet of packing space (for a total of 45,000 square feet) and six more bagging lines to meet market demand.

In a couple of months, Manfredi said the Kennett Square facility will see work begin on an addition that will provide comfortable accommodations and services for truckers. The accommodations include a cafeteria, internet access, clean bathrooms and more.

In general, the company tries to get trucks in and out in less than two hours.

“We don’t want to keep the trucks here for overnight, but if a driver shows up, (then) clean bathrooms, food and internet goes a long way,” he said. “Truckers are probably one of the most important links in [the produce supply chain] and probably the least respected. We want to try and take it up a couple notches for them.”

Despite the challenges of rising fuel and construction costs, Manfredi said that the company has weathered the pandemic with an eye toward meeting customer needs.

“We're very fortunate with the customer base and (new) customers that are coming to us that want to be served,” he said.