From Our Print Edition

Vertical Cold Storage (verticalcold.com), North Sioux City, S.D., is acquiring Liberty Cold Storage (libertycold.com), Bolingbrook, Ill., from West Liberty Foods (wlfoods.com), West Liberty, Iowa. Terms were not disclosed.

Liberty Cold Storage opened its nearly 300,000-square-foot warehouse in 2016 to service the nearby West Liberty Foods

Vertical Cold found the acquisition attractive because of the facility’s quality and its location near Chicago.

processing facility and other regional customers. The building features 36,000 pallet positions and 265 blast freezer positions, LED motion lighting, a 63-foot refrigerated dock and drop trailer flexibility. The operation houses a high-pressure pasteurization machine — with plans to double capacity — for food quality/safety and shelf-life extension. There are also large rooms for USDA-inspected market preparation, code dating and labeling, and other processing activities.

Vertical Cold found the acquisition attractive because of the facility’s quality and its location near Chicago. It has intermodal access and the ability to distribute to 85% of the country’s population within two days.

West Liberty Foods is a meat processing company owned by the Iowa Turkey Growers Cooperative and will remain a major customer of the DC. Vertical Cold Storage, a developer/operator of temperature-controlled DCs, is establishing a national network of cold storages.