The CMA CGM Group is to take a long-term lease and invest in a multi-temperature warehouse facility at DP World London Gateway Logistics Park.

According to CMA CGM, its international freight forwarding and logistics solutions subsidiary will occupy the site, which consists of a one-hectare cold store facility within a 2.4 hectare logistics plot development on the River Thames located close to main road access into the London area.

The facility will be fitted with IT traceability and management systems. It will also feature chilled and frozen chambers to handle a variety of temperature-controlled products, as well as customs clearance, shunting and last-mile delivery transportation. CMA CGM will also offer customers a range of value-added services such as product quality controls, packing, sorting, labelling, palletization and bagging.

Work will begin later this year and the facility will become operational in the early summer of 2019.

“This is an important step forward for CMA CGM and we’re looking forward to adding even greater value to the operations of our customers through the development of this facility,” said Alexis Michel, senior vice president of inland activities at the CMA CGM Group. “Drawing on the logistics expertise that exists within the CMA CGM Group, we’ll be able to offer our customers a unique range of value added services and make sure their goods receive the best care all along their journey with CMA CGM and until they reach their final destination. This is also a significant step up in our partnership with DP World, showing that ports, shipping lines, logistics companies and industrial zones can work collaboratively to deliver value for cargo owners shipping into and out of the UK. With the construction of this facility, CMA CGM reaffirms its commitment to its customers by placing their needs at the centre of the group’s development.”

CMA CGM is the world’s second-largest carrier of reefer containers and currently brings cargo through DP World London Gateway Port on seven services, with refrigerated containers arriving from the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, India and South America. The shipping line has consolidated much of its UK-bound temperature-controlled cargo originating in the Southern Hemisphere to move through DP World London Gateway Port in the past two months.

The port uses more than 1,600 reefer points, a weather-resilient, automated container stacking system, custom-built inspection facilities and a service for shunting containers between the port and its neighbouring logistics park.

“We’re delighted that the CMA CGM Group is establishing a temperature-controlled warehouse and logistics services on DP World London Gateway’s Logistics Park,” said Chris Lewis, chief executive officer of DP World UK. “The group is already bringing a significant amount of cargo through the port and this is an exciting next step in the product and service CMA CGM can offer its customers. We’re proud to have worked with such a key customer on a project which will without doubt increase supply chain efficiencies and add value. Our combination of a reliable, efficient port, with its international rail terminal and Authorised Economic Operator status – all plugged into a network which links more than 100 ports in 60 countries all over the world – on the same site as a flexible, scalable logistics park, enables logistics providers to bring different parts of the supply chain into one location; a location which sits just 25 miles from Central London, the largest consumer market in Western Europe.”