Americold closes warehouse

A sprawling, highly automated warehouse on Northwest Drive in Plainville that was supposed to supply Stop & Shop supermarkets across Connecticut with frozen food products has been closed and will be sold, according to federal filings made by the facility's owner.

Atlanta-based Americold Realty Trust said in a pair of Securities and Exchange Commission filings over the past several weeks that it was closing the facility immediately. The facility was supposed to be fully operational by the end of last year, but officials with Americold and ADUSA Supply Chain, a distribution subsidiary of Stop & Shop's corporate parent -- Ahold Delhaize -- signed an agreement on July 21 to close the Plainville distribution center immediately and put the property up for sale.

A second Americold facility in Lancaster, Pa. will stay open through the end of 2026 and then wind down operations.

What isn't immediately clear at this point is why the Plainville facility is closing and who initiated the move to close it. Americold officials did not respond to multiple telephone calls from CT Insider regarding the decision to close the facility and sell it.

Cal Hauburger, Plainville's director of economic development & special projects, said Thursday that Town Manager Michael Paulhus is scheduled to meet with Americold officials next week to discuss the future of the facility. Paulhus did not respond to multiple calls to his office on Thursday and Friday.

The Americold facility came out of a partnership between Americold Realty Trust and Ahold Delhaise USA that was announced in May 2020. It was to have been fully operational by the end of 2025.

The Americold building in Plainville is located near Robertson Airport. It stands 130 feet tall and spans more than 230,000 square feet, powered by fuel cells from Bloom Energy that produce electricity through a chemical process rather than drawing on the grid.

Christy Phillips-Brown, a spokeswoman for Ahold Delhaize USA, said the company's distribution subsidiary "has a number of other facilities that service the Stop & Shop stores today."

"We are working through those transition plans now," Phillips-Brown said without specifying whether any of the company's distribution facilities we cold storage facilities designed for frozen foods or whether any of them might be in Connecticut.

The president of the Connecticut Food Association, Wayne Pesce, said the transition that Phillips-Brown referred to could result in a broader relationship with New Hampshire-based C&S Wholesale Foods. C&S and Ahold have a relationship that dates back decades and the company, which also distributes grocery items to independent supermarkets across New England.

C&S has warehouses in Windsor Locks near Bradley International Airport and Suffield.

The Windsor Locks facility is a warehouse and distribution facility at 500 North St. that is 100% leased by C&S Wholesale Foods, according to the web site for the landlord of the facility, Winstanley Enterprises. The facility perishable and refrigerated goods along with general grocery operations, according to the web site..

Pesce described the distribution network of grocers as "a little like piecing together square of a large quilt," in terms of its complexity

"You don't want to have to truck frozen goods any further than you have to," Pesce said, adding he has no knowledge of what happened that resulted in the shutdown of the Plainville warehouse before it fully opened.

In addition to serving Stop & Shop stores, the original plan called for the Plainville facility to serve another Ahold Delhaize supermarket chain, Hannaford, which has stores in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and part of upstate New York.

Officials with C&S distributors were not immediately available on Friday to discuss their current relationship with Ahold Delhaize.