New Orleans Cold Storage (NOCS) announces the progress of its newest New Orleans LA center, a 160,000-plus — square-foot facility known as the Jourdan Road complex.
Construction is moving on schedule toward completion in early May 2003. The property also will house the corporate office and warehouse offices, which are also under construction immediately adjacent to the warehouse building.
The warehouse itself is 200' × 800', with a 25' average ceiling height. There are 24 dock doors for shipping and receiving, and a two-car, double-spur rail siding. The breakbulk loading side of the facility on the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet is situated to service two or three breakbulk vessels simultaneously, depending on their size.
The Jourdan Road facility will house 10 “super blast” freezing cells that will accommodate two truckloads of fresh product per cell, for a total daily freezing capacity of 20 truckloads per day. Fresh product received at more than 40° F will be brought down to well below 0° F in less than 24 hours, thereby exceeding United States Department of Agriculture requirements. Daily blast capacity will exceed 800,000 pounds, with a blast capacity per six-day week of nearly 5,000,000 pounds. The balance of the warehouse space, approximately 125,000 square feet, will be used for storage, with an overall storage capacity of 44 million pounds.
Upon completion of the Jourdan Road facility, the Nashville Avenue Wharf facility in New Orleans will be closed. The Alvar Street warehouse in New Orleans, with a storage capacity of 12 million pounds, will remain active, absorbing the import activities formerly performed at Nashville Avenue Wharf, and will continue to function as an active export facility, with eight super blast cells for freezing poultry and other items for export. The Alvar warehouse also has a three-car rail siding for receiving and shipping via rail.
With the new 3.5-million-cubic-foot Jourdan Road facility coming online, NOCS blast freezing capacity in New Orleans will double to approximately 1.2 million net pounds per day. Total NOCS warehouse space in New Orleans will increase to nearly 275,000 square feet.
