The temperature-controlled food logistics industry in Europe has effectively and strategically invested in cold chain innovation: the application of new and emerging technologies is making Europe’s day-to-day food logistics operations more resilient, more efficient, and more sustainable. By Julie Hanson, Global Cold Chain Alliance Director for Europe
Fully-automated cold stores
The increasingly widespread use of automation in cold storage facilities continues to transform logistics services for frozen food businesses and their customers in Europe. Cold store automation systems often comprise a network of conveyors, mobile racking, Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS), robotics, shuttles, temperature monitoring sensors and advanced Warehouse Management Software.
Automated systems streamline cold storage operations, minimize temperature fluctuations, reduce the need for lighting and make efficient use of the cold store’s space which saves substantial energy consumption per pallet. Europe boasts a rapidly expanding portfolio of world-leading, fully automated cold storage facilities.
NewCold opened a new state-of-the-art facility in Warsaw (Nowy Modlin), Poland, in 2025 with a capacity of 94,600 pallet positions. The fully automated, energy-efficient facility is one of the most advanced in the world. Magnavale’s new 101,000-pallet facility in Easton, UK, winner of the Controlled Environment Building Association’s Built By the Best award in 2025, is a high-bay frozen warehouse with integrated state-of-the-art automation technologies. It features ASRS with dual monorails, over 3,000 metres of conveyors spanning three floors, and a bespoke control system.
Constellation Cold Logistics is constructing a new facility in Wolverhampton, UK, which will feature advanced four-way shuttle technology as part of a system that builds, sequences, and dispatches loads, making operations faster, more precise, and minimizing delays. For Europe’s frozen food industry and for the region’s consumers, the application of the latest automation systems in cold storage facilities is helping to keep costs low, to improve food supply chain resilience by increasing storage capacity, and to reduce the environmental impact of the frozen food supply chain.
Advances in renewable energy generation
Decarbonisation in temperature-controlled logistics is another key area where exciting innovations are becoming increasingly widespread throughout Europe’s cold chain facilities and operations. Cold chain sites throughout Europe can be ideal for co-locating renewable energy generation, particularly solar, on a fairly large scale.
Lineage’s Cool Port fully-automated temperature-controlled logistics facility in Rotterdam, for example, has over 11,000 solar panels on its roof. The latest renewable generation and energy storage technologies are increasingly effective in enabling cold storage operators to draw on the renewable energy generated on site for a significant proportion of their considerable energy needs, at the same time reducing their consumption of energy from the grid very substantially.
As well as improving the industry’s environmental sustainability and providing some cushioning for operators from volatile energy costs, renewable energy generation also improves the cold chain site’s resilience by reducing reliance on grid energy. The past few years have highlighted the very real risks to food supply chains of disruption to Europe’s energy systems.
The adoption of increasingly powerful renewable energy generation in Europe’s cold chain means that operators are able to minimise energy-driven cost increases for their customers. The frozen food industry’s carbon footprint is being reduced, and the food supply chain overall is becoming more resilient, thanks to reduction of exposure to energy supply risks. Renewable energy generation storage and technology and its application in temperature-controlled logistics has come far over the past decade, but there is great potential for further technological advance and more widespread application.
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