Columbia Colstor looks ahead
Columbia Colstor looks ahead
QUINCY — A long-lasting area cold storage operation is returning to its roots with a major new expansion.
Ground officially broke for Columbia Colstor's new warehouse facility, which will be named Columbia Colstor International Logistics the week of Feb. 20, on Industrial Parkway near the Port of Quincy's intermodal industrial park.
Columbia Colstor president Don McGraw said the ground is being prepared for construction, stripping off topsoil and digging footings.
"We hope to have this up and going for business by the first week of September," he said of the new facility, which will be a total of 218,000 square feet, including a freezer that will be 151,000 square feet, a refrigerated rail dock at 33,000 square feet and a 25,000-square-foot unrefrigerated dock. "It probably won't be completely finished, but we'll be able to receive product by that first week."
McGraw noted Quincy was the site of Columbia Colstor's first location in 1983. It now also has plants in Othello, Warden, Wenatchee, Kennewick and Woodland, and headquarters in Moses Lake.
"They've always been great supporters of our company," he said of Quincy. "It's exciting that we can come back and build another building there."
The new facility will give Columbia Colstor long-needed additional space in the Basin and will be a local point to focus on export business.
"We're also going to try to attract other business from other areas coming through this area for export and then in the future, import business coming back into the country," McGraw said, adding the facility will also eventually serve as an intermodal site for the loading of containers onto rail cars to ship through the ports of Seattle and Tacoma.
"In order to grow our international business, that's the import-export side of it, we need more space," explained Columbia Colstor regional manager Russ Lytle, noting customers are committed to utilize the Port of Quincy's intermodal yard, which he said is scheduled to have its first train depart April 6.
Port of Quincy commissioner Patric Connelly said that first date is tentative.
"There are some issues we still have to get lined up, but it looks pretty good right at the moment," he said.
The refrigerated rail dock, which is twice the regular size in the new facility, will give the company the option to transload such products as apples, pears and fresh potatoes, Lytle said.
"We'll be able to bring poultry back in these rail cars we're sending east with product in them and transload that into containers and then continuation on the intermodal train over to the Port of Seattle or Tacoma," he said. Eventually, the company hopes to expand into other commodities.
The refrigerated containers that come in from China, for example, don't come empty, Lytle said, but loaded with a variety of products. The containers are expensive, and liner companies don't send them inland, instead breaking freight on the West Coast. The majority of the containers are used in eastern Washington and eastern Oregon so having them through to Quincy results in better equipment utilization for everybody, from the liner companies to the railroad.
It opens up a lot of doors for a business Columbia Colstor is already in, but which is fast outgrowing the company. Growth in the United States french fry business is fairly flat today, Lytle said as an example, but is growing 8 to 10 percent per year overseas.
McGraw said he has been to China and other countries and feels there will be opportunities in the future for additional business going in that direction.
"I hope Washington state can participate in that additional business," he said.
McGraw said that while the company has tried to make the facility as energy-efficient as possible, it doesn't make sense cost-wise to justify making the building entirely under "green" standards like the company did with its corporate office in Moses Lake.
"I wish the public utility would have more programs to promote energy efficiency, but at this time they don't," he said. "Our other plants around the state, the local utilities do have programs where they help pay for energy conservation, but so far, the Grant County PUD has not stepped up and offered that. But we are working with them, and they are interested in hearing about it."
Lytle said bringing containers in via rail isn't necessarily going to be any cheaper than using truck, but it will be a lot more efficient.
"One train going over will take the place of, I don't know, 100 trucks," he said. "You get one truck, one driver, one chassis, one container per day, and all the fuel, pollution and all these things. As our president says, if we're going to become energy efficient by 2020 and get away from being dependent upon the Arab countries for oil, we're going to need transportation modes like this to work."
Lytle said the company hopes to double the size of its Quincy workforce, presently numbering about 105 people in the original Quincy facility, within the next three to four years.
It's an undertaking he cautions comes with a lot of risk, a risk the McGraw family is taking because of their belief in the region and its ability to grow.
"It's hard to understand, but even though you know this is going to work, there's still a lot of risk," he said. "A lot of it's not guaranteed. A lot of it's built on the projected models everybody lays out, but it is a big investment."
Connelly said the port is encouraged to see ground broken for the warehouse, which will utilize the facilities the port has built and is expanding upon.
Columbia Colstor's initial conversations and encouragement got the district interested in looking into the intermodal project in the first place, Connelly said, adding he thinks the company makes a good anchor tenant for the intermodal yard.
"We've had a good working relationship with Columbia Colstor, and we hope to continue it," he said. "It's nice that the first building really being built there is theirs; it's kind of encouraging to us that they have got faith in the project too, like we have."
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