‘Getting creative’: How the demand for warehouse space is pushing industrial real estate into new territory

The growing popularity of e-commerce and other new business trends has made this space a hot commodity.

The once-stodgy world of industrial real estate is being forced to turn to novel solutions such as vertical warehouses and repurposed retail as the growing popularity of e-commerce and other new business trends drive demand for space.

“If I say industrial, a lot of people think it’s metalworking shops or a big distribution centre,” said Kevin Layden, CEO of Vancouver-based developer Wesbild Holdings Ltd. “But industrial today is changed. The businesses are changing, the economy is shifting.”

The pandemic has forced Canadians to avoid the checkout line at retail stores, but spurred a massive increase in online retail spending, which some estimates show exceeded $50 billion in 2020.

The surge of online activity has meant businesses need more space to conduct their operations, said Kyle Hanna, vice-president of industrial and logistics at CBRE.

“You have the explosion of the food sector, including meal kits and direct-to-home grocery delivery. You have restaurants pivoting from indoor-dining to becoming distribution points,” Hanna said.

“And then, obviously, the change of retail to e-commerce overall, which was a trend before this, but has been accelerated so strongly by COVID.”

However, with a 3.3 per cent vacancy rate across the country last year, industrial property has been in limited supply.

“Industrial today is changed. The businesses are changing, the economy is shifting”

WESBILD CEO KEVIN LAYDEN

About five years ago, Layden’s firm took notice of businesses’ changing needs as well as the dwindling supply of land suitable for warehouses in Vancouver, which has been at forefront of some of these trends, and decided to plan a vertical complex.

The development, named Marine Landing, will be a six-storey, two-building structure that will have 235 units ranging from 600 to 15,000 square feet, which businesses can own instead of lease.

The buildings will come with amenities, such as a fitness centre and a rooftop deck, and even have what Layden calls an “end-of-trip facility” for bike storage and repairs, perfect for bike couriers.

An artist’s depiction of Marine Landing. The development will be a six-storey, two-building structure that will have 235 units ranging from 600 to 15,000 square feet, which businesses can own instead of lease. PHOTO BY WESBILD HOLDINGS LTD.

The types of businesses Wesbild intends to attract — gaming studios and ghost kitchens, to name a few — aren’t the typical industrial users that come to mind. The development, he says, also has the room and flexibility to meet the changing needs of food and grocery services, biotech and even distribution, for businesses that need smaller spaces closer to the downtown core.

“They’re not your traditional office user and they’re not your traditional 200,000-square-foot warehouse user,” Layden said.

Wesbild isn’t the only firm building upward. Oxford Properties Group has already broken ground on a two-storey, 707,000-square-foot structure in Burnaby, B.C.

The building is designed for a single customer, according to a December press release, and features a 270,000-square-foot second-storey that full-size transport trailers can access via a ramp. It also has a truck court with loading docks.

The solution to build vertically to address changing needs is a nice fit for Vancouver because it addresses geographical and cost issues.

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Vancouver, surrounded by the ocean and mountains, has very limited industrial land available. As a result, net rents on industrial spaces have been climbing for the past nine years. In the fourth quarter of 2020, net rent increased 5.9 per cent from the year before to $13.92 per square foot, according to CBRE data.

Ontario doesn’t face the same factors as Vancouver, and thus, vertical hasn’t taken off yet, both Hanna and Layden said.

However, Toronto could be on its way. In the fourth quarter of last year, net rents in Toronto reached $10.25 per square foot, an increase of 18.9 per cent year over year, much steeper than Vancouver’s gains.

Hanna said net rents need to hover close to or exceed $20 per square foot to really justify a multi-storey structure and this year, he expects Toronto to enter the mid-teens. (By contrast, rents in the smaller market of London, Ont., sat at $6.17 per square foot).

Another trend that has been accelerated by the pandemic has been the conversion of traditional retail space to industrial uses, with newly vacant stores proving to be tempting locations for users who want to be closer to urban customer bases but who don’t need giant warehouses.

“We’re actually starting to see the first wave of retail repurposed into industrial now,” said CBRE’s Hanna.

Typically, the users taking up shop are food companies in end units of multi-unit plazas or just smaller, regional plazas because of the lack of pure industrial space downtown in a city like Toronto.

“They’re getting creative,” Hanna said. “For them, with perishable goods, it’s all about (getting) into the core, as close to the densely populated areas, for speedy deliveries.”

Diana Hoang, an associate vice-president and broker at Colliers International Canada, said she has heard of recreation companies, such as gymnastics organizations, taking up old, vacant department stores, but notes that retail isn’t the perfect solution for everyone.

“Shipping is a huge factor for the challenges industrial users are having,” she said.

Most retail spaces aren’t equipped with loading docks and doors that are big enough for transport trucks.

As well, net rents in Toronto for retail spaces are six times that of average net rents for industrial, she said.

“Because of that, industrial users tend to hold off, for now, on taking up retail space.”

Until vertical or retail conversions take off, Hanna said, developers and companies will continue sprawling outside of urban cores and into surrounding suburbs.

“The only natural way to defend against this supply and demand imbalances is to grow out of the city,” he said.

Source Financial Post. Click here to read a full story

Amazon is fuelling North America’s worst warehouse shortage — and it’s right here in Canada

Finding warehouse space around Toronto has never been harder, and the e-commerce fuelled shortage is disrupting businesses and threatening the broader economy.

With the pandemic driving a belated embrace of online shopping in Canada, Amazon.com Inc. has been gobbling up warehouses. That’s pushed the vacancy rate in the Toronto area down to just 0.5 per cent, making it the tightest market in North America, if not the world.

Logistics consultant Richard Kunst is seeing the fallout first hand, as companies try to fill orders and move merchandise. One client, a food manufacturer, has been forced to pack roughly a third of its orders in a parking lot. Others are so desperate for warehouse space Kunst has advised they ask local farmers if they can keep goods in their fields.

“It’s cheaper to go to a farmer and say, ‘tell me how much you’re going to make off a crop on a five acre lot, and I will pay you that, plus 10 per cent, in order to drop containers here,’” Kunst said.

While the warehouse shortage is most acute in Toronto, other major cities in Canada aren’t far behind, with Victoria, Vancouver and Montreal rounding out North America’s top four tightest warehouse markets, according to real estate brokerage Colliers International Group Inc.

Amazon fuelled

The single biggest driver of this squeeze has been Amazon.com. The pandemic has seen the e-commerce giant increase its logistics footprint by nearly 12 million square feet across nine major Canadian markets since the end of 2019, according to Colliers.

That includes taking a quarter of all the space that came up for lease in Toronto last year, while boosting its footprint 10 times in Montreal and quadrupling in Ottawa.

With new warehouse supply lagging the soaring demand, the brokerage CBRE has predicted Canada could run out of space entirely by the end of the year. That’s starting to raise alarms that Canada’s overall economy could be dragged down, just as it starts to recover from the pandemic.

“There are fewer jobs, fewer permanent jobs that can be created, because companies aren’t able to fulfill demand”

JAN DE SILVA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TORONTO REGION BOARD OF TRADE

“We become cost uncompetitive when we don’t have a good availability of warehousing,” said Jan De Silva, chief executive officer of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, which represents local businesses in and around Canada’s largest city. “There are fewer jobs, fewer permanent jobs that can be created, because companies aren’t able to fulfill demand.”

Amazon didn’t respond to a request for comment.

While the outlook for other types of commercial property, including offices and hotels, has been clouded by the coronavirus, investors have plowed money into industrial buildings over the last year, betting on the further rise of e-commerce with shoppers stuck at home.

Canada had lagged other developed economies in online shopping. But since the start of the pandemic, e-commerce nearly tripled its share of total Canadian retail sales to 10.4 per cent, government data show.

That’s increased the need for warehouses and fulfillment centre and has pushed prices higher. Colliers estimates the cost of leasing industrial space in the Toronto area went up 25 per cent in 2020.

Key exports

Because much of what is made in Canada — from car parts, to packaged food, to lumber products — is for export, particularly to the U.S., the increased costs could make Canadian firms less competitive compared to international peers. And for the domestic market, those higher costs could end up being passed on to consumers, quickening inflation.

“Costs to manage the supply chain of the business are going up,” said Mike Croza, the managing partner at Supply Chain Alliance, a consulting firm that works with companies in and around Toronto. “At some point in time as costs go up, there will be some kind of transfer of increase to the consumers.”

To deal with these pressures, developers are starting to explore converting office towers and shopping malls into logistics space. Amazon’s Canadian distribution unit recently purchased a defunct flea market in a suburb of Toronto. Still, the problem may ultimately come down to land.

Housing push

Canada’s warehouse crunch is, in some ways, an extension of another part of the economy currently experiencing short supply and soaring price inflation: Residential real estate.

Though the pandemic has shifted it into high gear, Canada’s housing market has been surging for years, driven by immigration and low interest rates.

With most of these immigrants landing in and around Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, local authorities in those cities and their suburbs have steadily converted areas zoned for industrial uses into land for housing to deal with the pressure.

Now, with home prices surging more than 30 per cent around the country, there’s also an acute shortage of warehouse space.

“Really well intentioned levels of government have been saying, ‘OK we have a housing problem, how do we solve that?’ And in solving that, whoops, now we have a warehouse problem, how do we solve that?” De Silva said. “We’ve got this whole chicken and egg situation that we’re trying to unravel.”

Source Financial Post. Click here to read a full story

Sutter Hill Developments CEO happy to keep low profile

Sutter Hill Developments’ recent 50 per cent acquisition of a downtown Toronto office building is the latest in the $1.2 billion of transactions it has very quietly completed since 1992.

“Once in a while we’ll put something out in a press release to let people know that we’re real, but we try to keep it pretty quiet,” Sutter Hill president and chief executive officer Karim Kanji told RENX.

“We’re a private company that doesn’t have any investors or partners, so it’s just my father and myself. We’ve never felt a need to scream who we are or what we do. We let our properties speak for us.

“People will go into a building because it makes sense, they like the location, they like the design, they like the feel or it’s at the right price point. They won’t go in it because it’s owned by me or Cadillac Fairview or Oxford or anybody else.”

Sutter Hill’s evolution

Sutter Hill has gone through a number of iterations over the decades, but the Kanji family’s involvement goes back to 1974 when Nizar Kanji — fresh from arriving in Canada from London — joined Abbey Glen Property Corp. as an accounts payable clerk.

Abbey Glen was later acquired by Genstar Development Company and rolled into an existing real estate entity called Sutter Hill, Karim explained.

The elder Kanji rose up the ranks and became head of Sutter Hill’s Eastern Canada division in 1981. He acquired the company and the management contracts of its assets in 1992.

The real estate development, investment and property management company now has a portfolio worth more than $500 million and comprised of office, industrial, retail, multifamily and senior care properties in Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto and Atlanta.

The American properties, comprised of 1,300 units in multifamily buildings, were distressed assets acquired in 2010 following the financial crisis.

Nizar, also known as Nik, is now 81. His son said he remains active within Sutter Hill and is asset managing the Atlanta properties from his home. The company’s head office, where seven of its 70 employees usually work, is on Consumers Road in North York.

“We look for properties where we can unlock value,” said Karim Kanji. “We like having assets that give us a sense of pride of ownership as well.

“For quite a while we’ve been trying to acquire office buildings in downtown Toronto, which has been tough to do. Seventy per cent of the office towers in the financial core are owned by five pension funds, so they’re very well locked up. The deals that do trade usually trade institutionally or they involve huge dollar amounts that are out of our reach.”

110 Yonge St. acquisition

Sutter Hill already owned the 12-storey Sun Alliance Building at 48 Yonge St. before its latest acquisition, a 50 per cent stake in a 20-storey building at 110 Yonge St. in partnership with Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust (CHP-UN-T).

Its share was purchased for $58 million from a client of BentallGreenOak.

“It was very forward-thinking in its design even though it was built in 1967,” said Kanji. “It’s column-free, has terrific views, beautiful architecture, three levels of underground parking, a PATH connection and a centre-ice location.”

The building has LEED v4 ID+C and Fitwel v2 certifications. Kanji said there are no immediate plans to make any changes, but “all options are on the table when it makes sense.”

Sutter Hill’s investment strategy

Kanji prefers office floor plates of about 10,000 square feet and leasing full floors to tenants so they have more control over their environment.

“They have their own washrooms. They can do their own branding. We see that as a future trend, where office space will be customized and branded for tenants’ needs to fit their specific requirements.”

Sutter Hill is looking to acquire more office and multifamily assets in Canada and the United States, and Kanji believes COVID-19 concerns or hardships on behalf of some property owners may lead to opportunities.

“I’m confident in the office market in major cities,” he said. “Suburban buildings and tertiary markets I’m not so sure about. I have no concerns with multifamily.”

Along with its own money, Sutter Hill’s financing comes from banks and financial institutions. Kanji said the company has considered taking on investors, but “it goes against what we’re trying to achieve, which is long-term family assets.”

Sutter Hill sold a 108-unit apartment building in Oakville  last year for $46.5 million. Kanji said the company had owned it for 35 years, as it favours acquiring and repositioning assets for long-term holds. However, it will sell an asset if the right offer comes along.

One of those properties was Parkway Mall in Scarborough.

Kanji had a summer job as a security guard at the mall in the early 1990s when he was attending Western University and Sutter Hill was managing it.

The company lost that management contract but, years later, the Kanjis were walking through the mall, found out it was for sale and bought it. They then sold it a few years later after repositioning it.

Community involvement and philanthropy

Kanji said he’s been on about 10 different charity boards and spends half his time on philanthropic causes, with a focus on those involved in the arts and education.

He’s currently on the board of governors for: Junior Achievement Central Ontario; the Sistema Toronto after-school music and social development program; and Workman Arts, a multidisciplinary arts organization that promotes a greater understanding of mental health and addiction issues through creation and presentation.

Kanji, who has also studied guitar at The Royal Conservatory of Music, is on the board of directors of Seventh Stage Productions. The feminist professional not-for-profit theatre company revolves around women telling stories about women.

“When it would make money, the money would go to different charities involving women’s issues,” said Kanji. “When it would lose, I would just write a cheque and move on to the next. I think it’s important to give back and to have a voice and do what you can to help society in general.”

Kanji has also attended conferences on counter-terrorism and geopolitical issues as vice-president of the NATO Association of Canada, an independent non-governmental organization established to foster a better understanding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s goals and Canada’s role in it.

“You can take skills you learn in different areas and re-apply them to make everything better,” he said.

Source Real Estate News Exchange. Click here to read a full story

Office demand will be ‘off to the races’ after COVID restrictions: Dream Office

The head of one of Canada’s major office landlords said pandemic restrictions have made finding new tenants a big challenge.

Michael Cooper, chair and CEO of Dream Office REIT, said in a broadcast interview Friday he expects to see a surge in leasing activity once emergency measures to curb COVID’s spread are lifted. The real estate company reported Thursday net rental revenue in the latest quarter fell 9.2 per cent year-over-year to $26.2 million. It executed leases totalling 73,000 square feet compared to 46,000 in the first quarter of 2020.

“People have barely been able to use offices for 14 months and we’ve gone from 97 per cent occupancy to 94 per cent,” Cooper said. “We can see that as the world opens up in other places, people are pouring back to the office.”

The company has been forced to stop showing its properties to prospective tenants due to lockdown restrictions particularly in the city of Toronto, which Cooper said makes getting new tenants difficult.

“Most of our portfolio is in the city of Toronto and Toronto’s lockdown is really severe and we’ve really been respectful of what the recommendations are, so we are really not doing much in the way of tours.” He said. “[But] we think within 60 days we’ll be back at it again and off to the races.”

Cooper said he does not expect a trend toward remote work following the pandemic will severely reduce demand for office space.

“We have the strongest IPO market for tech companies in decades; all of those tech companies are growing fast and a lot of them are using office space,” he said. “We’re going to continue to see a rotation on what’s driving office [demand] much more towards technology or fintech.”

Source BNN Bloomberg. Click here to read a full story

GTA commercial real estate market closes record-setting first quarter

With an unprecedented year behind us, the first quarter of 2021 saw the beginning of the COVID-19 third wave due to rapid spreading of new variants across regions. Talks of stay-at-home orders towards the end of March were back on the table, and while it seemed as though additional restrictions would slow activity, similar to what was seen last year, the GTA commercial real estate market is booming this year.

Q1 2021 saw the largest first quarter on record, with GTA investments totalling $6.3 billion, up 56% compared to Q1 2020. Investment momentum carried forward from the end of 2020 with the first quarter registering 663 transactions, a 24% increase compared to the same period last year. As vaccine rollouts began – albeit slowly compared to our US counterparts – work from home has continued, as have conversations of a continued remote work lifestyle even after vaccines are widely available. This uncertainty was evident in office sector activity, which saw an 18% decrease in investment totals compared to the same period last year – the lone asset class to see a decrease in volume this quarter. Overall, market performance to start off the year was strong, and the GTA continues to be one of the most sought-after markets for real estate investment in Canada.

The land sectors (residential land, ICI land & residential lots) led the charge during the first quarter of 2021, totalling nearly $3.2 billion, accounting for 50% of overall investment totals. Residential land was the most invested in, with almost $2 billion in sales, and residential lots recorded $369 million. This trend is expected to continue with rising demand for new homes due in part to record low interest rates still being offered by banks across the country. The ICI land sector came in at $803 million, with the lack of supply for industrial warehouse space persisting in the GTA. On the improved asset side, the industrial sector continued to dominate, with an investment total of $1.4 billion, accounting for 23% of overall Q1 2021 total investments and rising 81% compared to Q1 2020. The retail sector continued to gain back momentum, with $684 million in transaction volume, up 35% from Q1 2020. As confidence in the GTA market never wavered, investor challenges revolved around a lack of available assets for purchase.

According to Altus Group’s Investment Trends Survey for Q1 2021, all three industrial asset classes (multi-tenant, single-tenant & industrial land) are the most preferred by investors, followed by food-anchored retail strip. Toronto remains the second most preferred market by investors this quarter, following Vancouver. Overall capitalization rates in Toronto compressed slightly compared to the previous quarter, with rates remaining stable among downtown class “AA” office and tier 1 regional mall assets and decreasing in both single-tenant industrial and suburban multiple unit residential.

Notable Q1 transactions:

27, 37 Yorkville Avenue & Cumberland Street, Old Toronto – Residential Land
With a purchase price of $300 million, this property was sold under receivership and was acquired by the Pemberton Group. The 1.4-acre parcel is site plan approved for a gross floor area of approximately 961,161 square feet. The previous owner Cresford Developments originally acquired the property from KingSett Capital in December 2017 for $268.5 million.

357 & 359 Richmond Street West and 120-128 Peter Street, Old Toronto – Residential Land
This 0.4-acre high-density redevelopment site was acquired by China Aoyuan Group for $72 million. The vendor of the property was Carlyle Communities who assembled the site between 2014 and 2019 for a total consideration of $31 million. Prior to the date of sale, the property had been zoning approved for a 39-storey, 270-unit residential condominium building. This purchase represents the second acquisition by the China-based developer who previously acquired the Newtonbrook Plaza in North York for $200.8 million in September 2017.

388 Yonge Street, Old Toronto – Retail
This retail asset acquired by Ingka Group for $100 million represents the largest retail transaction of the quarter in the GTA. The subject property consists of just over 132,000 square feet of retail space within the first three levels of the 78-storey Aura condo building. At the time of sale, the top-level unit was fully occupied by Marshalls and the second-floor unit was recently vacated by Bed Bath and Beyond. The purchaser intends to open the first downtown IKEA store in Canada by occupying the second-floor unit and parts of the first floor. Once renovations are complete, IKEA would occupy approximately 66,175 square feet of space which would be scheduled to open late 2021 or early 2022.

55 & 105 Commerce Valley Drive West, Markham – Office
This two-building office complex located within minutes of Highway 404 and 407 in Markham was acquired by Soneil Investments for $115 million. The eight-storey buildings contain 375,255 square feet and sit on nearly 8.9 acres, which offers the new owners the opportunity of future development on the excess land.

100 – 110 Iron Street, Etobicoke – Residential Land
With a purchase price of $125.3 million, this two-building distribution facility was acquired by Triovest from Mantella Corporation. The property contains approximately 525,000 square feet of space and is ideally situated between Highways 401 and 409 in north Etobicoke. With a weighted average lease term of less than two years and rental rates below market levels, this property offers the new owners rental growth potential in the near term.

With the rollout of vaccines, all sectors except office have started 2021 strong, and show no signs of slowing. Although the third wave was imminent towards the end of the first quarter, this does not seem to be scaring off investors, as the market and overall population continue to look to the future with a more positive outlook. As seen throughout 2020, investors are still most confident in the land and industrial sectors, as these two asset classes have been impacted less by current market conditions, if not driven by it. The bid-ask gap persists between buyers and sellers, as investors do not want to pay top dollar given the risks that still linger. Overall, demand for quality GTA real estate assets is growing and shrewd investors are continuing to use the pandemic and record low interest rates to their advantage.

Source Altus Group. Click here to read a full story

Plug pulled on Five Points condo project in downtown Barrie

BARRIE, ONT. — The 20-storey, 208 unit condominium development that was meant to redefine luxury in downtown Barrie has been shelved.

The developer and its financial partner pulled the plug, blaming the pandemic and several lockdowns for disappointing sales.

In an email issued to those who did buy a unit, Advance Tech Developments president Joseph Santos wrote in part, “Although the project got off to a good start, COVID-19 has proven to be a hurdle that the project cannot overcome.” It continued, “The state of emergency with on-again, off-again lockdowns and restrictions have hampered our ability to achieve meaningful additional pre-sales.”

The contract allowed the company to cancel the project if it could not sell 85 per cent of units by May 1. Investors are being promised their money back.

Barrie’s mayor calls the situation surrounding what’s considered a prime piece of real estate frustrating.

“Especially given how strong the market is, especially given we’ve got cranes going up in the downtown for the first time in many years,” said Mayor Jeff Lehman.

Part of the site at the intersection of Dunlop Street West and Bayfield Street has sat vacant since a massive fire in 2007.

“We want more people living in the downtown,” Lehman added. “It is one of the best ways to make it safer and stronger. The best way for us to get more shops and services into the downtown core.”

The Five Points project had been two years in the making with community benefits, including residential units at affordable rental rates for 20 years.

Source CTV News. Click here to read a full story

Public lands, Part II: CreateTO and Toronto Lands Corp.

PART II: Second part of look at four major stewards of public lands in Canada is focused on the Greater Toronto Area through agencies operated by the City of Toronto and its major school board.

In Part I of this look at public lands utilization strategies, Canada Lands Company and Infrastructure Ontario were explored.

This information was presented during a recent webinar hosted by the Urban Land Institute’s Toronto chapter. The event was moderated by Urban Strategies Inc. partner Cyndi Rottenberg-Walker.

CreateTO

Public Lands, Part I: Canada Lands Co., Infrastructure Ontario

PART I: Demand for better utilization of public land is growing, and representatives from four bodies responsible for such portfolios talked about their strategies during a recent webinar presented by Urban Land Institute’s Toronto chapter.

“Land is an increasingly scarce resource and the real estate market is hotter than it’s ever been,” panel moderator and Urban Strategies Inc. partner Cyndi Rottenberg-Walker explained as she introduced the presentations.

“Public sector budgets are under tremendous and growing pressures, but these public bodies often own very well-located land assets, so many of which have become surplus to their core needs. All of that sounds like a perfect match of need and opportunity.”

Following is information about two of the major stewards of Canada’s public lands, along with discussion about some of their properties and their strategies to utilize the assets.

Atria finds niche in downtown Oshawa, builds across GTA

Gyan Chand Jain began developing in Toronto in 1969. His sons Hans and Vipin later founded Atria Development to continue a tradition of revitalizing communities by building new projects and repurposing existing structures.

Atria has now grown to about 40 employees and become a vertically integrated company involved in construction, marketing, sales, rentals, property management and more.

Atria got its start with projects located east of Toronto’s Don Valley, including: the 153-unit Garment Factory Lofts; the 101-unit i-Zone LiveWorkLofts; a multi-tenant commercial building in a former Reliable Toy Company factory; Kimberley Court Townhomes; and Ravine Homes on Senlac.

It has since widened its scope to include Ontario cities outside of the provincial capital.

Congebec expands for the food supply chain

LAUNCHING CONSTRUCTION: 2^nd PHASE FOR CONGEBEC’S COLD STORAGE FACILITY

In order to build its presence in Toronto and increase its pan-Canadian development in temperature-controlled food storage and distribution, Congebec Inc. is proud to announce the construction of a large expansion of its Mississauga facility. This expansion will allow the existing facility’s storage space to grow from 170,000 sq ft to 232,600 sq ft, increasing its storage capacity by 12,000 pallets. Congebec Inc.’s network will reaffirm its 9^th position as the largest temperature-controlled storage company in North America, and 13^th worldwide.