City Refrigeration unveils first joint ventures in US

CITY Refrigeration Holdings is preparing to make its first foray into the US with the opening of an office early next year to manage two new joint ventures.

The Glasgow firm’s founder, executive chairman Willie Haughey, is in Philadelphia finalising details of negotiations that have been 14 months in planning. Speaking on the eve of his departure last week, he said the joint ventures would be of meaningful scale with revenues of between £50 million and £100m.

“We are talking to two very tangible partners to joint venture with in the Philadelphia-Washington region,” he said.

“They are both substantial businesses in facilities management. One is with a very large property company and one with a utility group.”

City Refrigeration’s only other overseas operation is in Australia, where its Victoria subsidiary formed a joint venture with retailer Coles to maintain the supermarket chain’s refrigeration equipment. That deal was struck in 2009.

The US partnerships are likely to work in a similar vein, Haughey said. “It really just happened through word of mouth. One of the remarkable things about this business is that we have no sales or marketing people, so everything we do is through word of mouth.”

Set up in 1985, City Refrigeration employs nearly 11,000 people and is expected to generate some £420m of turnover this year.

The company achieved its major breakthrough in 1997 after winning the contract to maintain Asda stores in Scotland and the north of England, a contract that was later extended to the whole of the UK.

That contract was renewed this year for another decade, securing what currently accounts for about 38 per cent of City Refrigeration’s turnover.