Cold and ambient storage providers in Africa
Cold and ambient storage providers serving growers, packers and exporters in Africa, including global operators active in the region.
Owns and operates around 250 temperature-controlled warehouses worldwide, including 19 sites across Australia and New Zealand positioned near ports and major distribution centres.
Operates grade-A temperature-controlled warehouses at Tatu City near Nairobi and in Mombasa, designed for temperature ranges from +26°C to -40°C covering fresh produce, meats, frozen foods and pharmaceuticals.
Nigerian company that designs, installs and operates solar-powered walk-in cold rooms at farms and markets, renting storage to smallholder farmers and traders on a pay-as-you-store basis across more than 50 locations.
Designs, installs, services and finances modular energy-efficient cold rooms, precooling systems and packhouses for fresh produce and flower exporters in Africa and other emerging markets, including a cooling-as-a-service model.
Japanese logistics group offering warehouse storage and distribution including a cold chain logistics service alongside general ambient warehousing. It operates in Japan and internationally, including bases in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia.
Operates one of the world's largest temperature-controlled warehouse networks, with more than 480 facilities across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific offering frozen, refrigerated and multi-zone storage plus blast freezing.
Mozambican cold chain logistics operator running a refrigerated warehousing platform in Zimpeto next to Maputo port, with 13 cold rooms covering chilled (0 to +8C) and frozen (-18C to -22C) storage, plus picking, stock management and expiry control services for frozen and chilled food products.
Africa Global Logistics operates the Aerohub contract logistics platform near Abidjan's Felix Houphouet-Boigny airport, a tri-temperature facility handling frozen, chilled and ambient goods for pharmaceutical, retail and food clients across West Africa, with its temperature-controlled zone tripled to 1,800 square metres in 2023.
Family-owned agricultural exporter founded in 1950 and based in Alexandria, operating its own farms, packing stations and large automated cold storage facilities with Dutch controlled-atmosphere technology used mainly for potatoes and vegetables destined for export.
Citrus export company operating its own packing station in the industrial area of 6th of October City since 2014, with an annual citrus packing capacity of 30,000 tons and around 1,500 tons of on-site cold storage capacity for export shipments.
Green cold chain enterprise based in Kumasi providing solar powered refrigerated storage and mobile refrigerated transport for smallholder farmers and traders to reduce post harvest losses of fruit, vegetables and fish.
Operator of a 15,000 square metre multi-temperature cold storage and distribution facility in the Tatu City Special Economic Zone near Nairobi, serving horticulture, meat, poultry, seafood, food manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors with capacity for around 18,000 pallets.
BCS Kenya Ltd, a subsidiary of Dutch cold store operator Beemsterboer Cold Storage Services, runs a 4,000-pallet cold store in Nairobi with freezer rooms at minus 18 to minus 25 degrees Celsius and chiller rooms at plus 2 to plus 4 degrees Celsius, used mainly for exporting Kenyan avocados and imported fruit to Europe.
Deciduous fruit grower and packer farming around 1,000 hectares in the Western Cape that operates a controlled atmosphere storage facility at its Sunnyside site with 24 CA chambers extending apple and pear storage life to up to 14 months for export to Africa, Asia, the EU and the UK.
Temperature-controlled logistics and warehousing operator running frozen, chilled and ambient storage facilities in Nairobi and Naivasha, serving food manufacturers, retailers, restaurants and pharmaceutical clients across Kenya with FSSC 22000 certified transport and storage.
Lagos headquartered freight forwarding and logistics company operating temperature controlled warehouses near the Lagos, Tin Can Island and Port Harcourt ports, offering frozen storage for seafood and meat alongside chilled and ambient warehousing for food and pharmaceutical imports.
Cold storage and logistics group serving South African fruit growers and exporters with precooling, phytosanitary steri treatment, cold storage for citrus, stone fruit and deciduous fruit, container staging and PPECB TITAN system integration, operating facilities across Gauteng, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
Joint venture container freight station and less-than-container-load consolidation warehouse operating inside Modjo Dry Port, providing ambient general cargo storage and cargo consolidation for Ethiopia's import and export container traffic.
Refrigerated warehousing operator based in Algiers offering positive and negative temperature cold rooms and blast freezing tunnels for storage of perishable goods, along with cold chain logistics support.
Operates temperature-controlled warehousing and packhouse facilities in Kigali, offering chilled and deep-frozen storage from 0 to 8 degrees Celsius up to negative 20 degrees Celsius, refrigerated logistics, and blast freezing services for fruit and vegetable exporters, meat processors, fish traders and pharmaceutical distributors.
Nairobi-based operator of a temperature-controlled warehouse on Road A in Industrial Area offering chilled and ambient cold room storage with real-time temperature monitoring and alarm systems for handling fruit, vegetables and other perishable goods on a 24-hour basis.
Aviation ground and cargo handling company operating a cold storage facility and general warehouse space located near Entebbe International Airport for export and import cargo.
Operates Rwanda's first fully fledged commercial cold storage and pack-house facility at the Kigali Logistics Platform, providing temperature-controlled warehousing and a refrigerated truck fleet for fruits, perishables and pharmaceutical goods moving through Kigali toward regional export corridors to Mombasa and Dar es Salaam.
Cold storage and logistics operator based in Prospecton, Durban, whose core business is storage and handling of citrus produce under controlled temperature and ambient conditions, shifting to general cargo storage outside the citrus export season.
Airport ground handling company at Entebbe International Airport offering warehousing and cold storage for perishables, pharmaceuticals, and other special cargo passing through the cargo terminal.
Operates a customs bonded Inland Container Depot and dry port at Mbagala Rangi Tatu near the port of Dar es Salaam, providing ambient warehouse space of 2500 square metres and 6000 cubic metres capacity for cargo in transit, plus bagging and logistics services.
Operates the perishable cargo cold storage complex at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, with refrigerated space (2 to 8C), chilled rooms (15 to 25C) and a deep freezer (-20C) plus temperature-controlled dolly transport, handling flower and other perishable export cargo passing through the airport.
State-owned enterprise operating the Modjo Dry Port container terminal, Ethiopia's largest inland container depot handling most of the country's containerized import and export traffic, connected to the Ethio-Djibouti railway.
State-owned cold chain complex built in the Akaki Kaliti area of Addis Ababa with capacity to store over 2,000 tonnes of fruits and vegetables and about 1,000 tonnes of animal products, aimed at reducing post-harvest losses for export and domestic supply chains.
Lagos-based logistics and warehousing company operating a cold chain facility in Ogba, Ikeja with cold rooms ranging from minus 25 degrees Celsius for frozen goods to 2 to 8 degrees Celsius for chilled storage, plus refrigerated trucks serving food, beverage and pharmaceutical clients near the Apapa ports.
Port Harcourt wholesale frozen food distributor operating industrial cold rooms with more than 500 tonnes of combined capacity across four sites in Rumudara, Rukpoku and Trans Amadi, storing and distributing frozen fish, chicken and seafood to retail partners across Nigeria.
Third party cold chain logistics provider offering cold storage, transportation and distribution of temperature sensitive goods including fresh produce and pharmaceuticals, and cold chain facility engineering for airport export warehouses.
The largest commercial cold storage facility in Mozambique, based in Maputo and owned by the Export Trading Group since 2008, providing frozen and chilled warehousing plus logistics services for cereals, grains and other food commodities.
Temperature controlled logistics operator running the first refrigerated warehouse in the Tanger Med free trade zone, serving importers and exporters of agricultural, food and fishery products with cold storage, labeling and light processing services.
A cold chain operator active since 2010 that runs a temperature controlled multi storage facility of over 5000 metric tons near Dar es Salaam, offering blast freezing, chilled and frozen storage, cold chain transport, processing and packaging for meat, fish, potatoes, vegetables and fruit.
Perishable logistics operator running the Europort Cold Storage Facility at Harare's international airport, with controlled temperature rooms, forced air cooling stations and vacuum coolers used to prepare horticulture exports such as citrus and roses for air and sea freight.
Fresh produce logistics group operating since 1945, with a branch in Agadir offering refrigerated warehouse services including temperature controlled storage cells, handling, sorting, repackaging and quality control for fruit and vegetable exporters.
Agricultural export company founded in 2005 and based in Alexandria, managing an integrated potato and vegetable supply chain that includes farm sourcing, grading, washing, packing and cold storage prior to export logistics and distribution.
Inland container depot and bonded logistics warehouse in Beira's Manga area serving import and export cargo moving between Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and eastern DRC, with 24,000 square metres of covered storage plus an open storage yard for break bulk and bulk commodities including grains and fertilizers.
Ivory Free Logistics is the warehousing and transport arm of the S3C (Societe de Commercialisation de Cafe et de Cacao) group in Abidjan, operating ambient warehouse capacity of about 12,000 tonnes with conditioning facilities and unloading docks used for coffee, cocoa and cashew goods movement.
Ground handling subsidiary of Kenya Airways operating cold-room and perishables handling facilities at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, offering pre-cooling, temperature-controlled storage and pallet build-up for cut flowers, fruit and vegetables destined for air export to Europe.
Specialised fresh produce cold storage operator running refrigerated warehousing from minus 25 to plus 10 degrees Celsius, fruit packing and container depot operations, with facilities at Maydon Wharf and Bayhead in Durban and an integrated packing, warehousing and container depot facility at Coega near Gqeberha handling citrus exports.
A commercial cold storage facility in Lusaka operated by Deep Catch Group (a DP World Market Access Consumer business) offering bulk freezer, chiller and dry goods warehouse space for meat, poultry and fish producers, plus hospitality and retail clients, with pallet handling and a food processing area.
Ground handling and cargo logistics operator at Entebbe International Airport running a multi temperature cold storage warehouse with chiller and freezer rooms used for horticulture and fish export consolidation before flights.
Long-established Zimbabwean freight and logistics company operating general and bonded warehousing alongside customs clearing and transport services, with its head office and warehouse in Southerton, Harare handling import and export cargo.
Operator of a 25 metric tonne digital cold storage facility at Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal 2 in Lagos, with a 13 tonne walk in chiller and a 12 tonne walk in freezer used to store perishable cargo such as pharmaceuticals, frozen foods and other imports moving through the airport.
Refrigerated warehousing company established in 1997 near Cairo on the Cairo/Ismailia road, operating temperature-controlled cold stores and a refrigerated pack house for fresh fruit including citrus, along with pharmaceuticals and dairy products.
NIBC Cold Store is a Walvis Bay based frozen cold storage operator and subsidiary of Kuiseb Fishing Enterprises, offering fish and frozen product storage with a stated capacity of about 4,500 pallets, a 20-ton blast freezer, and container plug services for the fishing sector.
Operator of a large bonded cold storage warehouse facility in Tema offering roughly 50,000 pallet positions for frozen foods and beverages, allowing importers to hold goods before customs clearance.
Senegal's national port authority operates the country's main seaport at Dakar, including roughly 15,000 square metres of refrigerated cold store warehousing (magasins a froid) used for chilled and frozen cargo such as seafood, meat and other perishable exports and imports transiting the port.
Cold storage operator established in 2008 in the Coega Port Zone near Gqeberha, running cold rooms and steri chambers that prepare citrus and other fruit for export, with capacity for around 14,000 pallets and handling roughly 8 percent of national citrus export volumes annually.
Family owned multi-temperature cold storage provider operating since 1993 in Durban, offering frozen and chilled storage from 5 to minus 35 degrees Celsius plus ambient storage, including handling of citrus for import and export, and holding PPECB compliance certification.
Moroccan cold storage operator renting refrigerated warehouse space and cold rooms for food products, with a citrus conditioning station that includes degreening chambers and crate rental services in a major citrus producing region.
Refrigerated warehousing and logistics operator based in Ben Arous near Tunis, offering positive and frozen cold storage chambers for rent, located close to the highway, the Port of Rades and the Bir Kassaa wholesale market.
Cold storage management company operating precooling, cold storage and controlled atmosphere facilities for the fruit export industry in the Western Cape, including the ColdHarvest facility in Paarl with 18 CA chambers and sites in Killarney Gardens and Durbanville near the Port of Cape Town.
Established in 1994, SSSL runs freight forwarding and East Africa's first true third-party logistics cold storage warehouse in Nairobi, offering multi-temperature and multi-commodity cold warehousing, reefer transport and distribution under HACCP and BRC certification.
Citrus and fresh produce packing station of Groupe Kabbage located in Agadir, operating an 80,000 square meter site with a refrigeration capacity of 10,000 tons for pre calibration, cold storage and export of oranges, lemons, grapefruit, mandarins, early vegetables and olives.
Swissport operates a cargo and perishables handling centre at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport with dedicated cold storerooms of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius for fresh-cut flowers and fruit, plus separate rooms for pharmaceuticals, handling roughly 44,000 tonnes of perishables annually.
A Dar es Salaam based logistics operator running over 67,000 square metres of racked, stacked and mixed layout ambient warehousing near the port and airport, certified for food, hazardous and toxic goods storage with 24 hour security and fire protection.
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Common questions
Does storage in Africa cover both cold and ambient goods?
Yes. Storage in Africa covers refrigerated, frozen, ambient, and dry space, not only cold chain. Many providers operate multiple temperature zones within a single facility, and dry or ambient capacity is often the larger share of overall space, particularly for goods that do not require climate control throughout their journey.
How do I check whether a storage provider in Africa is suitable for my goods?
Ask directly about licensing, temperature logging where relevant, hygiene and pest control practices, and how the provider documents the condition of goods while in storage. It is also worth confirming their location relative to the transport routes you actually plan to use in and out of Africa, since that affects practical suitability as much as the facility itself.
Can storage providers in Africa handle both import and export flows?
Many can, though the practical emphasis differs. A provider mainly set up for exporters will be geared towards consolidation and departure documentation, while one focused on imports will be geared towards rapid clearance and onward distribution. If your goods move both ways through Africa, it is worth asking a provider directly which flow their operation is built around.
How do I check whether a provider listed for Africa is actually reliable?
Look for a working address and contact details, and ask for references from businesses that have shipped through Africa recently rather than relying on a listing alone. Confirm the specific service you need, storage, freight forwarding, or customs handling, since a general logistics listing does not always mean deep capability in the one service that matters to your shipment. A provider willing to explain what happens when something goes wrong is a stronger signal than any credential.
Should I use a local provider in Africa or an international one with a presence there?
It depends on what matters more for your shipment. A local provider in Africa usually has deeper knowledge of ground conditions, relationships, and paperwork specific to that market, while an international provider offers a single point of contact and consistent processes if your goods also move through other countries. Many exporters combine the two: a local provider for physical handling in Africa, and a wider forwarder to manage the rest of the route.
What should I ask a provider in Africa before committing to work with them?
Ask what happens to your goods at each handover point, who is responsible if something is delayed or damaged, and what documentation they produce and when. Ask for a quote that breaks out individual charges rather than one bundled figure, so you can see what you are paying for at each stage. It is also worth asking directly how they have handled a shipment that ran into difficulty in Africa, since that answer tells you more than a general pitch.
Storage across Europe, the Middle East and Africa
The EMEA grouping covers an unusually wide range of storage infrastructure, and Africa should be assessed against its own market rather than against the most developed examples elsewhere in the group. In parts of Europe, dense networks of temperature-controlled warehousing sit close to major ports, rail terminals, and consolidation hubs, supporting fast, tightly scheduled turnover. Elsewhere in the region, ambient and dry storage remain the primary form of capacity, with refrigerated space concentrated around a smaller number of ports, airports, and urban centres, and it is worth confirming which pattern applies to Africa before making assumptions about availability.
Regulatory regimes differ substantially across this grouping, spanning customs unions, free trade arrangements, and standalone national systems, each with its own approach to inspection, bonded storage, and cross-border movement. A provider operating in Africa should be able to explain, in plain terms, how goods move in and out of their facility from a compliance standpoint rather than leaving a client to infer it. Climate is also a genuine variable across the group, from cooler northern markets where insulation and heating are the practical concern to hot and arid conditions where cooling load and power reliability matter more, and storage specifications that suit one part of the region will not automatically suit another.
Infrastructure reliability, including power supply and access roads, varies more across EMEA than within a single country's borders elsewhere, so it is worth asking a provider in Africa directly about backup power, maintenance history, and how disruptions have been handled in the past rather than assuming continuity. Language and documentation conventions also vary by sub-region, so requesting written confirmation of terms in a shared working language is a sensible precaution before committing goods to a facility.
How trade moves through Africa
Africa's food and agricultural trade moves across a continent where infrastructure quality and trade routing vary enormously between and even within countries, and where a great deal of cargo travels substantial overland distances before it reaches a port at all. Landlocked countries depend on transit through a coastal neighbour to reach international shipping, which means the trade geography of the interior is defined as much by corridor agreements and transit route quality with a neighbouring state as by conditions in the exporting country itself. Coastal nations with well-established ports serve not only their own exports but function as gateways for goods originating well inland, and understanding which corridor a shipment will actually use is often more important than understanding the origin country's own infrastructure in isolation.
Trade patterns follow a small number of well-worn corridors linking major agricultural production zones to coastal ports, generally along road and rail links that were built around specific export commodities and have been reinforced over time rather than replaced by a denser network. This concentration means these corridors tend to be relatively reliable once cargo is on them, but it also means capacity and scheduling around them can be tight during peak harvest periods, and a delay at a single border crossing or port can affect a wide catchment of exporters relying on that same route. Storage capacity, both ambient and cold, clusters around these established corridors and their port cities, with production areas further from them served by a longer and more variable chain of aggregation and local transport before goods reach any formal storage or export infrastructure.
The provider landscape is genuinely mixed in scale. A layer of well-resourced international and regional logistics groups operates around the continent's major ports and busiest corridors, offering standards of documentation and cold-chain handling comparable to other developed export markets, while a much larger number of smaller, locally based transporters, aggregators, and warehousing operators handle the movement of goods from farm gate to those main corridors. These smaller operators are frequently the only realistic link between a production area and the formal export chain, and their local knowledge of roads, seasons, and community relationships is genuinely difficult to substitute with a larger operator's general capability.
Someone sourcing across several African countries at once should think in terms of transit corridors and gateway ports rather than national borders alone, since the practical route a shipment takes, and the country whose port infrastructure it depends on, may differ from its country of production. Regulatory and certification requirements differ by country and are not always harmonised even where regional trade blocs exist, so building in verification of current requirements per country, rather than assuming continuity from one to the next, avoids delay. Distances between production areas and ports can be considerable, and overland transport time and reliability deserve as much attention in planning as the ocean leg that follows. A buyer working across the continent benefits from treating the provider relationship at the local, in-country level as seriously as the international freight forwarding arrangement, since it is often that local link that determines whether a shipment reaches the corridor at all.
Sourcing across Africa as a trade area means matching expectations to the specific corridor and country combination involved rather than to the continent as a single entity, and valuing the smaller, locally embedded providers who connect production to the formal export chain as much as the larger operators who move goods once they reach it.
Comparing storage providers in Africa
Fernable lists a wide range of cold and ambient storage providers in Africa, which means the practical task is narrowing rather than searching. Start with what the operation actually does day to day, not what it claims to offer. A facility's temperature range, humidity control, and whether ambient and cold space sit within the same site or are handled separately tell you more about fit than a general capability list. Look for specifics on how goods move in and out: dock configuration, whether pallets are handled on a first-in-first-out basis by default or only on request, and how the provider documents temperature logs and handling records. These operational details separate providers who run tight, auditable processes from those who describe themselves in the same broad terms as everyone else.
Location within Africa matters more than it first appears. Two providers listed under the same country entry can sit hours apart, close to different ports, rail links, or production regions, and that gap changes lead times and inland transport cost more than any difference in stated capability. Weigh proximity to your actual origin or destination point alongside the storage type itself, and treat certifications and accreditations as a starting filter, not a decision on their own: check what body issued them, what they actually cover, whether that's food safety, a specific commodity, or chain-of-custody, and how recently they were renewed. A certification that has lapsed, or that covers a narrower scope than the marketing copy implies, is a common source of false confidence.
Where the field is genuinely crowded, run comparisons in parallel rather than sequentially. Put the same set of questions to several providers at once, covering minimum and maximum tenure, how they handle overflow or seasonal peaks, insurance arrangements for goods in their care, and their process when a shipment arrives outside agreed specification. Consistency in how clearly and specifically a provider answers is often more revealing than the content of any single answer. Differences in stated square footage or number of loading bays are usually cosmetic once a facility clears your minimum operational threshold; differences in how a provider actually manages temperature excursions, documentation, and communication during a problem are not. Narrow first on the handful of criteria that matter for your specific cargo, then compare the shortlist in detail rather than weighing every listed provider against every other on every dimension at once.