Cold storage facility opens in Crown Point with plans for future expansion already set
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
New Jersey-based Core X Partners is marking the opening of its first cold storage and logistics facility in northwest Indiana.
The 215,000-square-foot Core X Crown facility in Crown Point represents a nearly $80 million investment and the creation of about 75 jobs, the company said this week.
The facility has the capacity to store products at temperatures down to -20 degrees, and the company is targeting customers in the frozen retail markets, including ice cream producers, according to Thom Smith, president and regional partner for Core X Crown.
Smith told Inside INdiana Business that the location in the Chicagoland area is ideal for such a facility.
“It’s kind of the heart of the North American supply chain,” he said. “You can get everything out to your high-populated density areas such as anything on East Coast. You can get to the Southeast. You can get West. From here, you can get all the Midwest. So it’s a very favorable area.”
The Crown Point facility boasts 28,000 pallet positions, Smith said, and it was built with future expansion of up to 450,000 square feet as demand grows.
Core X Crown officially began operations in December and is ramping up deliveries. Smith said the company has been very fortunate with the core staff that it hired for the facility, with zero turnover to date.
“I think it’s driven on developing a deep culture for people,” he said. “If you take care of your team members, they’ll take your customer. So that comes with great benefits, fair wages and incentives tied to not just to productivity, but incentives that are tied to safety and customer service and productivity. Make them part of it.”
The company plans to hire 55 people by the end of this year toward its ultimate goal of 75 employees, according to documents filed with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. The new jobs come with an average wage of $33.65 per hour.
The IEDC has offered Core X up to $1.4 million in incentives for the Crown Point project based on the company’s job creation plans. The project also received support from the Crown Point City Council.
The Core X Crown project is the latest in a series of cold storage facilities being developed in northwest Indiana representing hundreds of millions of dollars of investment.
Georgia-based Arcadia Cold is building a $93 million facility near the Core X building in Crown Point. New Jersey-based United States Cold Storage is also working on a $124 million facility near Hebron.
Smith said there has always been an opportunity for cold storage growth in the region.
“At one time, people may said it was undersized and it wasn’t at capacity. Now everybody’s building. You’re adding capacity to [the market],” he said. “You look at direct-to-consumer-type opportunities—we all have to eat, right? So it’s not going to go away. So as populations grow in these dense areas, you’re also going to see the demand for more retail, grocery outlets as well.”
Smith said as the new facility grows to full capacity, the company will continue to focus on going above and beyond for its customers to fuel that growth.
“You have a nice building with all the bells and whistles, but you’ve got to have the customer focus there with the right structure built in it,” he said. “You’ve got to continue to build people that have experience and take care of your customers, but it’s got to be done the right way.”
In addition to the Crown Point facility, Core X Partners also has locations in California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah.