MHKTS COLD STORE center aims to bridge gap in Dubai
At Ras Al Khor Industrial Zone, it’s common to see huge warehouses but one stands out with its state-of-the-art cold storage facilities designed to bridge the gap for the need for more amid Dubai’s ever increasing appetite for imported food and frozen products from all over the world.
P.P. Kariappa, CEO of MHK Trading & Ship Chandlers LLC (MHKTS), says their newly-opened 3PL cold store logistics center was built to address the growing needs of Dubai for more temperature controlled storage facilities.
Costing more than $10 million, the MHKTS cold store offers appropriate storage for all kinds of food and specialized products with more than 6,000 pallet positions under controlled temperatures ranging from +10 to -20 degrees centigrade.
Spread across 80,000 sq ft, the refrigerated warehouse plant has 14 chambers and uses the ammonia-based refrigerant, thus, assuring efficiency and economic usage.
Khatib Mohd Saeed, MHKTS manager-operations warehousing & logistics, said they opened the plant in April and its clientele from the food, agriculture, pharmaceutical and the manufacturing industries are growing.
Originally from Mumbai, India, Saeed first came to the UAE in 1990 and had spent the past 26 years in the logistics and warehousing industry.
“The future for Dubai’s logistics industry is good,” he said. “There are millions of people who live in the city and millions more come and go every year for different events and tourism. I would say the industry grows 5 to 10 percent every year. People have to eat,” he said.
Their location in Ras Al Khor also sets them apart as it is in the heart of the city compared to other cold storage warehouses in other free zones.
“We are ideally located in Ras Al Khor. Others are located in Sharjah, Jebel Ali, Al Quoz, Techno Park, which takes time to reach,” said Saeed.
Professionally managed by a team of highly experienced personnel in the industry, the MHKTS 3PL also boasts of the latest in warehouse technology known as the Stow Shuttle System from GENAVCO.
It is the first cold storage center in the UAE to use the Stow Shuttle System which uses a remote control system to store and retrieve packages from the pallet.
“We did our research and found out that GENAVCO is the market leader when it comes to providing pallets and the stow system. It did the work for IKEA which involves about 150,000 pallets,” said Saeed. “We want to we want to provide the best for this facility in terms of quality and services.”
The warehouse operations manager said this system saves space and time and makes inventory easier.
Homegrown
The company CEO said the cold storage center is part of the Mir Hashem Khoory (MHK) Group, one of the pioneers in the UAE’s real estate and gold trading industries.
From its humble beginnings in 1963, the business had since grown to a multi diversified portfolio of dynamic business enterprises in real estate, healthcare, education, trading, ship chandelling, marine repairs and logistics, facilities management, construction, manufacturing and even investment consultancy.
The late Mir Hashem Khoory, the Emirati businessman who formed the firm was the principal board member of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and the National Bank of Dubai.
“He is a true visionary. His life and achievements proved that one can achieve success by confidence, courage, conviction and hard work,” said Kariappa who himself started from the bottom of the corporate ladder before reaching his current status as CEO.
In 2014, the MHK Group established MHKTS to serve the needs of the local food industry, specializing in supplying fresh chilled/frozen foods, including poultry, beef, seafood, mutton/lamb, delicatessens, dry foods, dairy products, branded consumer products, janitorial and ship spares.
From that venture came the idea to open the MHKTS 3PL center.
“We thought why can’t we start our own facility? So this was how it came about. We’re keeping our products but at the same time, we’re offering our facilities for other businesses that need our services,” said Saeed.
Kariappa said the UAE logistics industry has a lot of potentials because of its ideal geographical location in the Middle East and the latest infrastructure in land transportation and aviation and their company wants to grow with it.
“Dubai has been the logistics hub in the Middle East and over the next three years, we believe it will get even bigger,” he said.
