Use one service, or both
Plenty of clients come to us for brokerage alone, and plenty come for construction alone. Both are complete services in their own right and we are glad to be engaged for either. Nothing on this page is a bundle you have to buy into.
But a specific set of decisions sits directly on the seam between the two, and those are the ones that get answered badly when the broker and the builder are different firms who meet at the closing table.
Where the Seam Matters
These are the questions that need both sides of the table in the room at once.
Decision
Build or Buy
The honest version of this analysis needs a real construction number and a real market number at the same time. Cold storage replacement cost is high enough that an existing facility with a serviceable plant can be materially cheaper than building, or materially more expensive once you price the deferred capital in it.
We model both against your actual throughput requirement, including the timeline cost of a build and the retrofit cost of an acquisition. Sometimes the answer is that neither works and a build-to-suit lease does.
Site selection
Buildability Before You Firm Up
A site can be perfectly located and still be the wrong site. Insufficient electrical service with a long utility upgrade timeline, a water table that complicates sub-slab work, zoning that will not accept the machinery room, or setbacks that break the reefer turning circle. None of these are visible in a listing.
We run buildability on shortlisted sites during the option period, so the site you commit to is one we have already priced.
Acquisition
Technical Diligence With Teeth
Standard commercial diligence will not tell you that the refrigeration plant has four years left, that the vapour barrier has been failing quietly, or that the floor has a heave history. Those are construction findings, and they are worth real money in a price negotiation.
Our GC partner walks the building during the conditional period and produces a costed remediation view you can actually negotiate against.
Capital
Sale-Leaseback Structuring
The lease you sign is the asset the buyer is pricing. Term, escalations, and above all who carries refrigeration capital replacement will move your proceeds more than a point of cap rate will.
Because we know what the plant will cost to replace and when, we can structure the obligation deliberately rather than accepting the buyer’s draft.
Investment
Underwriting With the Plant in the Model
A cold storage pro forma that treats the refrigeration system as a maintenance line item is not an underwriting. Plant replacement is a capital event of a size that changes the return, and it arrives on a schedule that is knowable in advance.
We underwrite acquisitions with that schedule modelled, which occasionally means telling a client the deal is thinner than the broker package suggests.
How Integrated Engagements Run
One team, one accountability line, from question to keys.
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Define the requirement
Throughput, temperature zones, pallet positions, and timeline, in operating terms, before any building is discussed.
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Test the options
Buy, build, retrofit, or lease, each costed properly. This is where most of the value is, and it is the stage most often skipped.
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Execute the chosen path
Brokerage, construction, or both, run by the same team that did the analysis.
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Deliver and support
Through commissioning, licensing, and occupancy, with the people who made the original recommendation still accountable for it.
Questions we get at the decision stage
Before there is a building or a site, when the question is still what to do.
Should we build or buy?
Buy when a building exists that fits your temperature profile and throughput within a tolerable compromise, because you get occupancy in months rather than years and you avoid construction risk entirely. Build when the compromise is operational rather than cosmetic: the wrong temperature split, insufficient clear height, a plant at end of life, because you will pay for those every year you occupy.
The honest complication in Canada right now is that vacancy is low enough in most markets that the buy option frequently does not exist at any price. We model both paths on total cost of occupancy over the hold period rather than on day-one cost, which is where the two options usually swap places.
How does a sale-leaseback work for a cold storage owner-occupier?
You sell the facility to an investor and simultaneously lease it back on a long-term basis, converting the equity in the building into working capital while continuing to operate from it. For cold storage owner-occupiers this is often the cheapest capital available, because the buyer is underwriting a mission-critical asset with a committed tenant.
The structuring matters more than in dry industrial. Lease term, rent, escalations, and above all the allocation of refrigeration plant replacement and energy cost drive both the price you achieve and what you live with afterward. Getting the plant obligation wrong can cost more than the pricing gain.
What makes a site actually buildable for cold storage?
Power first: refrigeration load is large, and utility capacity and the timeline to deliver an upgrade are frequently the binding constraint on the whole project. Then soil conditions, which determine the floor system and the heave protection. Then municipal zoning and approval timelines, which are the largest schedule variable. Then truck access and turning geometry, then water and drainage for the plant.
We screen sites against these before a client commits to land, because a site that fails on power fails expensively and late.
How do you underwrite a cold storage investment differently?
Three adjustments. Capital reserve is set against real refrigeration plant remaining life rather than a percentage-of-revenue rule of thumb, because plant replacement is lumpy and large. Operating expense modelling has to handle energy explicitly, including where the lease allocates it and what happens if power prices move. And releasing risk is assessed against the facility’s actual temperature configuration, since a building set up for one product type has a materially narrower tenant pool than dry industrial.
Cap rates for stabilised Canadian cold storage currently run roughly 5.00% to 8.00% depending on region and asset quality. The market report has the provincial detail.
Can we engage you for advisory only?
Yes. Advisory is a standalone engagement and a substantial share of it never becomes a transaction or a construction project: a build-versus-buy study that concludes you should stay where you are is a successful outcome, and we would rather deliver that than manufacture a deal.
Where advisory does lead into a transaction or a build, the work already done carries forward rather than being repeated.
Not sure which path is right?
That is a good reason to call. We will tell you what we would do, including when the answer is that you do not need us.