BURLEY, Idaho — NewCold, one of the largest cold-storage facilities in the U.S., celebrated its grand opening this week.

Based in the Netherlands, the company built the 180,000-square-foot facility to serve the needs of McCain Foods — the world’s largest manufacturer of frozen french fries and potato products.

The partnership with McCain was key to the project, Jonas Sarttouw, NewCold business development manager, said.

“Without them, this wouldn’t have been possible,” he said.

The $90 million facility can store 90,000 pallets of frozen product in a high-bay warehouse at 5 degrees below zero. Most of the operation is fully automated, moving and storing product in a massive system of racks 140 feet tall.

Every movement is tracked by computer and monitored around the clock.

Conveyors can unload a semi-trailer in 3 to 4 minutes, and every item received is tagged into the system, Derek Bedke, NewCold site manager, said.

Products are transported to the high-bay warehouse on chain conveyors and stacked by automated cranes. The warehouse is dark to conserve energy, and oxygen levels are lowered to 16% for fire suppression, he said.

A low-bay area is used for “picking” activities, where NewCold can manually customize pallets for customers that might not want a full pallet of one product, he said.

The facility can control customers’ production significantly better than a conventional storage plant, an important factor given the increasing scale of production and retail and growing attention to food safety, Sarttouw said.

The warehouse is also more efficient than conventional cold storage, using less energy, land and labor. A conventional facility of the same capacity would have five times the footprint, he said.

With automation and without the need for forklifts, the warehouse can be narrower and higher than conventional facilities to provide density of storage. The vertical design also reduces floor and roof space, through which most cold is lost, he said.

Adding to the efficiency is the largest and most modern refrigeration equipment, metal panels and highly efficient air locks. The warehouse uses half the energy of a conventional facility with similar capacity, he said.

NewCold is here to support McCain Foods, but the company also bought additional land and built the warehouse to accommodate expansion, he said.

“We want to support the local food industry,” he said.

The warehouse is already storing some dairy products, and the company is looking to expand to serve companies with refrigerated products, he said.

“There’s a lot of room for expansion,” he said.

Local economic development organizations have been active in drawing food and related businesses to the area. It’s creating a “cluster,” where other companies want to locate because they need similar services, such as packaging, storage and logistics, he said.

For NewCold, it’s “a gravitational pull to store other things in this area,” Bedke said.

It also provides economic benefit for area communities, he said.

NewCold began operations in Burley in May. It currently has 75 full-time employees, almost all from the area, and anticipates a workforce of 100.

The company also operates a cold storage facility in Tacoma, Wash., as well as facilities in Europe and Australia.