ALBERTVILLE, Ala. — Construction is underway on a new frozen storage warehouse in Albertville built to serve the poultry processors and food manufacturers that anchor Marshall County's economy.
PermaCold Logistics and its design-build partner, Ti Cold, announced on Sept. 30 that they had broken ground on the 120,000-square-foot facility. The building will hold about 17,000 pallets of frozen product and stand roughly 50 feet tall.
The project is expected to create more than 50 permanent jobs in warehouse operations, logistics and facility maintenance, according to one of its financing partners.
What's being built
The facility is a frozen cold storage warehouse that will offer temperature-controlled storage and logistics services to manufacturers, processors and distributors in Albertville and across the Southeast. It sits in the Albertville Industrial Park.
Ti Cold says the design includes construction requirements specific to frozen food storage and distribution. The companies did not release temperature ranges, dock counts or the level of automation planned for the building.
One financing partner lists the building at 121,270 square feet, slightly larger than the 120,000 square feet in the groundbreaking announcement.
Why Albertville
Albertville sits in the heart of Alabama's poultry and food manufacturing industry, and Marshall County is part of a major poultry production corridor. The new warehouse puts frozen storage close to the processors that need it.
Mark Schultz of PermaCold Logistics said the region's strength in food processing and manufacturing makes Albertville an ideal place for the company to grow. He said the goal is to give customers "the capacity, flexibility and service they need from a modern cold storage partner."
The groundbreaking drew representatives from the City of Albertville, the Marshall County Commission, the Albertville Industrial Development Board and the Alabama Farmers Federation, along with local business leaders.
How it's financed
The project is backed by a group of lenders and community development partners: JPMorgan Chase, BHM Bank, Alabama Farm Credit, Five Points and UB Community Development.
Part of the financing comes through the federal New Markets Tax Credit program, which offers tax credits to investors who put money into projects in lower-income and rural communities. UB Community Development, the community development partner of United Bank, announced on Oct. 2 that it provided $10 million of a $40 million New Markets Tax Credit financing for the project. The partners did not disclose the total cost of the facility.
Alex Jones, president of UB Community Development, said the deal fits the group's focus on rural economic development and United Bank's long history of financing agriculture in the region. It is the group's third New Markets Tax Credit project in Albertville.
Who's building it
Ti Cold, which has offices in Melbourne, Florida, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, is designing and building the facility. The company specializes in industrial cold storage and also helps clients with site planning, development and operations.
Ti Cold partner Rob Adams said he has spent more than 30 years building cold storage and has worked on nearly 100 projects. He said Albertville is exactly the kind of project the company was built to deliver. Ti Cold President and CEO Sam Tippmann praised PermaCold's development team and said he expects the facility to serve the region for years.
Who PermaCold is
PermaCold Logistics is a third-party cold chain company based in Darien, Georgia. It offers temperature-controlled storage, blast freezing and transportation for the food, e-commerce and pharmaceutical industries.
Albertville is not the first project for PermaCold and Ti Cold. In July 2025, the two broke ground on a 216,000-square-foot freezer facility near Brunswick, Georgia, with about 30,000 pallet positions and up to 600,000 pounds a day of freezing capacity. That facility was expected to open in 2026 with about 50 jobs.