For years, Lineage's location in Vlissingen, the Netherlands, has been a banana hub, including for Chiquita, which offloads at the cold store every week. Since the second quarter of 2024, though, the Cool Port I Lineage location in Rotterdam has had its own banana division. Thanks to the 'banana wall' installed in the cold store, the new department has room to store around 5,000 pallets of this fruit.
"Bananas stream into Vlissingen on conventional ships, but there was also demand to receive containers of this fruit in Rotterdam," says Mark Ketelaar, Lineage's Regional Vice President of Operations for the Netherlands and Germany. "We process large volumes of imported fruit every year at Cool Port I, from citrus and grapes to melons, avocados, and mangoes. We, however, didn't have a banana storage facility in Rotterdam. Now we can offer that service to our customers as well."
Annemieke Honig en Mark Ketelaar
Second banana client in the works
The first banana customer was quickly welcomed in Rotterdam, with the second expected within a few weeks. "The banana wall means we've set up a separate shipping area for the bananas with six cold stores. They can, thus, be handled separately from the other fruit and we can prevent premature ripening. Our biggest challenge as a refrigeration and freezer facility is dealing with seasonal peaks. That's inherent to the fruit business. We've managed to cover that reasonably well with the import fruit package. The beauty of bananas is that they aren't subject to seasonality, and we can receive them year-round," Mark explains.
In recent years, this originally American company has acquired several other businesses. "That's not the goal until itself, but our scale does offer advantages. Many customers use our extensive network of more than 70 cold stores and freezers in Europe."
Intermodal transport
"The great thing is we can offer clients an intermodal transport solution. When the ships arrive in the Netherlands, barges bring as many containers as possible to our cold store. We're a one-stop shop for further processing. Besides unloading and storage, we also handle customs clearance and quality control," says Mark. "And, although less relevant for bananas, our partner can package products in-house. The bananas then find their way to our European customers. Most of the containers are refilled with produce from our Cool Port II cold store and return to the port by barge for further shipment."
In the cold chain, every second counts. "Our innovation-driven approach combines data science and technology to create a faster, smarter, more reliable cold chain while striving to reduce its environmental impact and minimize waste in the supply chain," Mark concludes.
For more information:
Lineage
anhonig@onelineage.com
www.ir.onelineage.com