2023 GCCA Convention

9:30 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.

State of the Global Property Insurance Market

The Property market in the US continues to harden. In this session, members from the Lockton team will discuss causes for the hard marketplace, the role engineering can have on insurability and competitive renewal pricing.

Presenters: Austin Casel, Account Executive, Lockton
Lakin Milner, Property Engineer, Lockton
Tracey Wild, Unit Leader, Lockton

Innovations in Warehouse Design, Maintenance and Modernization

CEBA members are true experts in building the cold chain and to recognize their tremendous expertise, the CEBA Built by the Best Award is awarded each year during their annual conference. The award acknowledges project teams moving the industry forward in the design and construction of controlled environment facilities. In 2022, Griffco Design/Build, Inc. received the CEBA Built By the Best Award in the Over $35 million Project category for their work on Phase I of Americold’s Gateway facility (Atlanta, GA). Coldbox received the Award in 2022 for their Under $35 million Project which was a facility built for Confederation Freezers in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. This session will walk through the planning process, the actual construction work and all the decisions made in between.

Panelists:
Bill Lawless, Senior Director, Design Engineering, Americold
Scott Griffin, President & CEO, Griffco Design/Build Inc.
Marko Dzeletovich, Founder & CEO, Coldbox

10:45 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Economic Landscape and How it is Impacting Food Consumption Trends

It’s a complex world. Questions remain around the stickiness of core inflation, the tightness of the labor market, the outlook for the consumer, and the likely path of monetary policy ahead. Meanwhile, rising geopolitical tensions, a volatile energy market, the acceleration of AI, and changing sustainability regulations can lead to significant risks and opportunities. In this session, Xinnan Li, an analyst from RaboResearch, will guide us through the changing macro landscape and its impact on food consumption and cold storage operators.

Presenter: Xinnan Li, VP F&A Packaging, Cold Chain Analyst, Rabobank

Optimizing Supply Chains Through Scheduling Standardization

While there is a lot of talk about the need for more standardized processes when it comes to keeping trucks moving and on schedule, there is much more than meets the eye required to take that from a concept to a reality. Initiated in 2022 by early members Convoy, J.B. Hunt and Uber Freight, the Scheduling Standards Consortium (SSC) aims to create freight appointment scheduling standards that provide consistent visibility into the supply chain. Together with shippers, carriers and transportation platforms and intermediaries, the SSC aims to simplify the integration of freight scheduling systems across the fragmented ecosystem and generate efficiency across the freight industry. Hear more from Consortium members about this potential game changing initiative.

Speaker: Greg Granata, Commercial Product Manager, E&T, J.B. Hunt

1:45 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Refrigerated Transportation & Warehouse Infrastructure: The Transition to New Technologies

Join us for a highly engaging conversation with industry clean technology leaders that will discuss an overview of current and future zero emission TRU and infrastructure technology options along with improvements on performance, weight, and maintenance over the traditional TRU. Explore the critical path steps for successful and safe clean technology deployments. Where are refrigerated transportation companies investing in regard to zero emission regulations, the electrification of fleets, and other ESG goals? What funding is available for transportation companies to move to these more sustainable models? How might delays in the transition to these new technologies impact the supply chain? What are the potential impacts to temperature-controlled facilities? This panel will touch on these issues and others in regard to modernizing the various modes of refrigerated transportation. Come join in and look at what the future of cold chain distribution holds – the future is now!

Panelists:
Sam Doerr, Trailer Portfolio Leader, Thermo King
Mike Marshal, Vice President – Fleet Leasing, West & Zero Emissions, PLM Fleet
Peter Schneider, Director of Sales & Project Management, GridMarket

Moderator: Keith Mowery, Senior Vice President, Logistics, United States Cold Storage

Trends & Innovations in Cold Storage

Hear from experts on what the warehouse of the future will look like. Presenters in this session have the unique position of working on many different controlled environment buildings and are privy to how companies are looking to use the latest technologies (Automation, AI), how ESG is being taken into account when they are deciding what and how to build, what are the trends in the types of facilities being designed and where.

Presenters:
Gary White, Vice President Engineering, Bellingham Cold Storage
Stephen Wilson, Account Executive, Slate River Systems, INC