Addition of Colombia’s market leader and entry into the fourth-largest economy in Latin America.

Emergent Cold Latin America (Emergent LatAm), the fastest-growing refrigerated storage and logistics service provider in Latin America, announced today the acquisition of Frigorifico Metropolitano (Frigometro), the leading cold storage operator in Colombia, with four locations in key markets across the country. This acquisition marks Emergent LatAm's entry into Colombia – one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in Latin America – and represents the first of many planned investments in this important food export market. The Frigometro management team will remain with the company to ensure business continuity and further growth.

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Emergent Cold Latin America acquires Frigometro (Photo: Business Wire)

Established in 1992 by entrepreneur Gonzalo Diaz, Frigometro operates more than 29,000 pallet positions across four best-in-industry warehouses in strategic locations: Cartagena, Buga, Bucaramanga and Bogotá. Each site offers room for growth, with a 4,000-pallet expansion now coming online in Bucaramanga and several projects planned for later this year. These facilities serve Colombia’s largest ports and metropolitan areas, which permit Frigometro to equally support the domestic distribution market and export activities. The company offers a full range of storage and value-added logistics services such as blast freezing and handling, and operates a domestic transportation business.

Colombia is an important part of Emergent LatAm’s regional investment strategy. It is the fourth-largest economy and the third-most populous country in Latin America, with geographic connectivity to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via four leading port locations. Further, Colombia is an important member of the global food trade, having set a new record in 2021 for total amount of food exports.

With the addition of Frigometro, Emergent LatAm now operates 10 cold storage facilities, with other three facilities now under construction, across a total of seven countries.

“We are proud to welcome the Frigometro team to our growing Latin America platform,” said Neal Rider, CEO of Emergent LatAm. “I am extremely impressed with the strength of its management team, and the high quality of the company’s asset base. We look forward to making additional investments in Colombia with the goal of accelerating the growth of Frigometro and our entire regional network. I also wish to thank Gonzalo Diaz for the opportunity to proceed with this transaction, and for having built an outstanding company known for innovation and service quality.”

“We feel very fortunate that Emergent Cold Latin America chose to enter Colombia by acquiring Frigometro,” said Gonzalo Diaz. “We are sure that it will be a great alliance that takes refrigerated logistics in Colombia to another level.”

44 Capital Finanças Corporativas and Scotiabank acted as financial advisors and Brigard Urrutia acted as a legal advisor to Emergent LatAm.

About Emergent Cold LatAm:

Emergent Cold Latin America (www.emergentcold.com) is building a world-class, end-to-end refrigerated storage chain to provide integrated logistic solutions for refrigerated food for clients throughout Latin America. The Company was founded to meet the modern solutions needs in the refrigerated chain and the growing demand of clients in domestic and foreign trade.

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