LOGISTICS BRIEFS:

Retail distributor United Natural Foods, Inc., (UNFI) Providence, R.I., said it will lease a 590,000-square-foot multi-temp distribution center in Lancaster, Texas. Officials say the operation was recently built by Prologis and is located 15 miles south of downtown Dallas at the intersection of Interstates 20 and 35. The facility provides UNFI with a location to support retailers throughout the Southwest including Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas and Louisiana.

UNFI says the facility will house dry grocery as main program space; 54,000 square feet of refrigeration and freezer space; an expanded cold dock; and nearly 20,000 square feet of space for employee offices and workspaces.

The International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW) released its annual IARW Global Top 25 list of public refrigerated warehouses with the greatest capacity of warehouse space worldwide. Accompanying the Global Top 25 is the IARW North American Top 25.
Officials noted that the combined space of IARW's total membership -- including the Global Top 25 members and the North American Top 25 -- saw a 5 percent increase from this time last year, operating approximately 3.8 billion cubic feet.

IARW provides a complete listing of all IARW members in its Global Cold Chain Directory. Visit www.iarw.org for details.


Terra Technology, Norwalk, Conn., said diversified foods giant ConAgra Foods Inc., Omaha, Neb., selected Terra's Multi-Enterprise Demand Sensing (MDS) solution to reduce inventory and improve customer service.

"ConAgra Foods selected Terra Technology's Multi-Enterprise Demand Sensing solution to improve short-term forecast accuracy, reduce inventory and improve cash flow," said Steve Vielmetti, vice president, Demand Planning and Supply Chain Optimization for ConAgra Foods. "MDS will help enable us to more capably predict changes in consumer behavior, helping us reduce safety stock by up to 15 percent and reduce costs in our supply chain."

Terra says its Multi-Enterprise Demand Sensing reconciles daily demand signals from all participants in the supply chain. MDS uses pattern recognition mathematics to decipher which information is predictive and in a recent pilot, the software reduced forecast error by 40 percent for all retail items.


Washington state media reported that public refrigerated warehouse operator Millard Refrigerated Services, Omaha, Neb., opened  a 150,000-square-foot facility near Centralia, Wash. The operation stores frozen product and Millard reportedly plans to construct a frozen dough processing line inside it, as well. Centralia is the Millard's 36th location nationwide, reports said.