Time flies with great content! Renew in to keep enjoying all our premium content.
Prime
Logistics company Cold Solutions raises Sh2.4bn
Refrigerated semi-truck at a cold storage warehouse loading bay. Cold Solutions raises $19M to expand East Africa cold storage and transport, tackling food and pharma waste.
Kenyan cold storage and logistics firm Cold Solutions has raised $19 million (about Sh2.4 billion) in debt financing to expand its refrigeration and temperature-controlled transport infrastructure across East Africa, as it seeks to curb waste.
The funding was provided by Mirova, a French-based asset management firm focused on sustainable investments. Cold Solutions said the capital will be used to scale up its cold-chain infrastructure, including expanding capacity at its flagship facility in Tatu City Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Kiambu County.
The company operates temperature-controlled storage and logistics services in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda, serving the agriculture and pharmaceutical sectors. Its Kiambu facility at Tatu City is designed to handle between 15,000 and 18,000 pallets.
“In addition to scaling the Kiambu site, we are constructing a new facility in Mombasa with a planned capacity of up to 8,500 pallets to support port-linked imports and exports,” CEO Newton Matope told the Business Daily in an interview.
The logistics firm says it serves more than 50 clients, ranging from small-scale farmers and agri-tech aggregators to multinational food manufacturers, supermarket chains, hotels, quick-service restaurants and pharmaceutical companies.
Beyond fresh produce, the firm stores and transports poultry, meat and seafood, as well as vaccines, biologics, insulin and other temperature-sensitive supplies.
Mr Matope said they also seek to add large, refrigerated trucks to their fleet. “With more storage warehouses, we will be able to operate larger trucks which can transport more produce over long distances as the smaller vans focus on the last mile,” he said.
Operating from the Tatu City SEZ allows the company’s clients to benefit from duty-free storage, deferred taxation and VAT-exempt logistics services, which lower storage and handling costs and support re-exports into regional markets, he added.
Cold Solutions says about 30 percent of the facility’s energy needs are met through solar power, while its refrigeration systems use ammonia, a natural refrigerant with no global warming impact.
Cold Solutions is owned by an investment vehicle controlled by Arch Cold Chain East Africa, whose principal shareholder is African Rainbow Capital, majority-owned by South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe.
Cold Solutions’ major operations are in Kenya. In the larger East African region, the company has bought majority stakes in local cold storage businesses, which it seeks to scale.
Last year, the company disclosed that it was selling a 21.6 percent stake to South African private equity company Inspired Evolution at an estimated $20 million (Sh2.58 billion) to raise capital to expand operations in East Africa.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), post-harvest losses in sub-Saharan Africa range from 40 to 60 percent, largely due to inadequate storage and transport.
Mirova, a subsidiary of asset manager Natixis Investment Managers, has been increasing its investments in sustainable infrastructure and mobility projects in Kenya. Last year alone, the firm announced a $10 million (Sh1.29 billion at current exchange rates) commitment to electric motorcycle assembler Arc Ride and a similar amount to solar products maker d.light.
