Wert-Berater, Inc. is an independent cold storage feasibility study consultant preparing lender- and agency-ready studies for refrigerated warehouses, freezer facilities, temperature-controlled distribution centers, and food-logistics developments. Our analysis evaluates regional cold-chain demand, contracted and merchant throughput, competing pallet-position supply, storage and handling rates, anchor-customer concentration, refrigeration and utility costs, construction requirements, stabilization, debt-service coverage, and downside sensitivity for SBA, USDA B&I, conventional, and institutional financing.
Prepared for lenders, CDCs, and federal agencies to SBA SOP 50 10 8, USDA 7 CFR Part 5001, and conventional underwriting standards. Fiduciary duty runs to the lender and the agency, never the borrower. 4,000+ engagements since 1998 covering $41.2 billion in evaluated project value. So far in 2026: 41 engagements and $1.54 billion evaluated — 17 SBA, 11 USDA.
Cold storage feasibility is contracted-throughput analysis under demanding capital costs. The study evaluates the food-production and import volumes within the service radius, the committed or probable anchor tenancy the revenue model depends on, pallet-position pricing against regional supply, and the power and refrigeration economics that dominate the operating statement. Speculative cold storage receives conservative treatment: the national pipeline has taught lenders to demand demonstrated demand, and the study tests the project against that standard.
Methodology draws on USDA and port-volume food-flow data, regional pallet-position supply and pricing surveys, utility-rate analysis for the refrigeration load, and RSMeans-based budgets for insulated construction. The model presents anchor-committed and merchant pallet revenue separately, stress-tested to the program standard.
Every Wert-Berater financial model is fully linked with no hardcoded values, so any reviewer can stress any input. Deliverables comprise a complete narrative report and the linked Excel model, with ten-year pro forma, sensitivity analysis at ±5, 10, and 15 percent, interest-rate stress from +0.5 to +3.0 percent, and ratio analysis benchmarked against RMA and IBISWorld data.
SBA engagements are prepared to SOP 50 10 8, including its debt-service-coverage minimums of 1.15x operating and 1.00x global. USDA engagements follow RD Staff Instruction 5001 across the Business & Industry, Community Facilities, REAP, and Value-Added Producer Grant programs. Conventional engagements are built to the lender's stated coverage standard, typically 1.20x. Cold-chain projects are financed under USDA B&I for rural food-system assets, SBA 504 for owner-operators, and conventional structures; the firm prepares the study to the corresponding compliance standard.
The firm's cold-chain record includes the $33,656,250 Phase I cold storage and logistics facility in Kenner, Louisiana, evaluated for the lender and USDA Rural Development under USDA Regulation 5001 across six alternative building programmes from 110,000 to 250,000 square feet, and a temperature-controlled distribution facility in Amarillo, Texas underwritten on a $16,000,000 construction basis with a ten-year pro forma building from $3,957,594 to $5,174,877 in revenue. Independence is non-negotiable: determinations follow the evidence and are not revised under pressure, and studies are built to pass lender, agency, and third-party review without exception items.
A cold storage feasibility study consultant is engaged by the lender, the CDC or the agency to determine whether a proposed refrigerated warehouse can fill its pallet positions at the rates assumed, and whether the resulting cash flow services the debt. The work divides into six evidence streams, each of which must stand on its own before the financial model is credible.
Market demand. Regional food production and food and beverage manufacturing activity establish what physically needs to be stored. Grocery, foodservice and third-party distribution demand establish who stores it. Import and export flows through nearby ports and border crossings, commodity categories by temperature requirement, the practical cold-chain service radius from the site, the availability of substitute space in adjacent markets, and any announced competing supply together bound the addressable opportunity. A market that produces protein behaves differently from one that imports produce, and the study says which one it is.
Customer and contract demand. Cold storage revenue is contract revenue before it is real-estate revenue. The consultant reads the executed storage agreements and letters of intent, identifies the anchor customers, measures concentration against the total committed pallet base, tests the throughput commitments those agreements actually oblige, separates contracted capacity from merchant or spot capacity, and, where the credit depends on it, examines the customer's own financial standing. A signed agreement with a weak counterparty is not the same evidence as a signed agreement with a strong one.
Competitive supply. Supply is counted in pallet positions by temperature zone — freezer, cooler, and controlled ambient — not in square feet. The consultant canvasses competing operators for occupancy, quoted storage rates, handling rates, blast-freezing and cross-dock capability, and their own expansion plans, then adds permitted and announced projects to establish the supply the subject will face at stabilization rather than the supply that exists today.
Operating economics. Storage revenue by pallet position and by temperature zone, handling revenue on inbound and outbound movements, and any picking, packing, labelling or blast-freezing services are modelled separately, because their margins differ. Against those sit refrigeration electricity, utility demand charges, labour, maintenance, insurance and reserves.
Site and logistics. Interstate access, truck circulation and staging, dock count and configuration, rail or port proximity where the commodity flow justifies it, electrical service capacity, water and sewer, labour availability at the modelled wage, and zoning all constrain what the site can actually operate.
Capital and financial. The insulated envelope, the refrigeration plant, the racking and dock equipment, contingency and working capital form the capital stack. Commissioning risk, the stabilization curve, debt service, DSCR, breakeven occupancy and sensitivity testing against revenue, utility cost, construction cost and interest rates form the underwriting conclusion.
Dedicated refrigerated or frozen capacity leased by pallet position, typically to food processors, distributors and retailers requiring medium- to long-duration storage. Feasibility turns on the depth of regional production and distribution demand, the pallet capacity and occupancy of competing facilities, achievable monthly storage rates by temperature zone, and the share of capacity that can be placed under contract before the doors open.
Facilities holding several temperature zones in one envelope — deep freeze, freezer, cooler and controlled ambient — serve a wider customer base but carry higher refrigeration intensity, more complex storage configuration and materially higher energy cost per pallet position. The study models each zone separately, because a zone that is easy to fill at a low rate and a zone that is hard to fill at a high rate do not average meaningfully. Customer requirements drive the zone mix, and the mix drives both the capital budget and the power model.
Throughput-oriented facilities where revenue comes as much from handling and cross-docking as from storage. Dock count, door-to-floor ratio, staging depth, distribution radius, proximity to food production and to population, and transportation access govern the model. Contracted customers and committed throughput volumes matter more here than static occupancy, and handling revenue is forecast on movements rather than on occupied positions.
Scope of practice. Wert-Berater's role is market, economic, financial, management and lender-grade feasibility analysis. The firm does not perform mechanical or refrigeration engineering, does not issue stamped drawings, does not provide architectural design, does not perform code engineering, and does not commission refrigeration systems. Where engineering, environmental or geotechnical reports exist, they are treated as inputs to the feasibility analysis and are relied upon as prepared by the qualified professionals who issued them; where they do not yet exist, the study says so and identifies the assumption that stands in their place.
A cold storage feasibility study is not a general real estate analysis with refrigeration appended. The scope is built around the operating economics that distinguish temperature-controlled logistics from dry warehouse: refrigeration load, power contract structure, ammonia or HFC system capital, insulated panel construction, and the anchor-tenant commitment that underwrites the revenue model. Each of those elements receives its own section in the narrative and its own schedule in the financial model.
The deliverable set is a bound narrative report, the fully linked Excel model, and an explicit statement of conditions — the factual premises on which every projection rests.
Demand for temperature-controlled storage is not derived from population or general industrial absorption. It is derived from food production, food processing, import volumes, and the cold-chain requirements of specific commodity categories. The analysis begins by identifying the food-production and import activity within a defined service radius, using USDA Agricultural Marketing Service data, National Agricultural Statistics Service production surveys, and U.S. Census Bureau foreign-trade statistics disaggregated by port of entry.
On the supply side, the competitive inventory is built from state refrigerated-warehouse licensing registries, USDA-licensed cold-storage facility reports filed under the United States Warehouse Act, and direct canvassing of identified facilities for temperature zones, pallet capacity, and published pricing. Where a project is positioned near a port or rail intermodal facility, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers waterborne commerce data and Surface Transportation Board waybill samples inform import-volume trends without reliance on invented figures.
Anchor-tenant demand is validated against the prospective tenant's own production or distribution volumes, cross-referenced to publicly available food-manufacturer and distributor filings where the counterparty is a reporting company. Broker and trade-association surveys from the Global Cold Chain Alliance and International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses provide rack-rate benchmarks and occupancy context. The result is a demand picture built from traceable, auditable sources — the standard a USDA Business & Industry or SBA reviewing analyst will apply when the study arrives for credit underwriting.
Cold storage is not underwritten like generic industrial real estate, and the reason is structural. A dry warehouse can be re-tenanted by almost any occupier at a market rent that is observable from comparable leases. A refrigerated warehouse is a single-purpose asset whose value depends on a specialised customer base, whose rates are quoted per pallet position rather than per square foot, and whose operating cost cannot be passed through in the same way. The credit therefore rests on demonstrated customer commitment far more than on the building.
The study separates and tests each layer of that commitment: agreements actually executed, as distinct from letters of intent, as distinct from expressions of interest; the anchor demand those agreements represent; the pallet positions committed under them; the concentration of that commitment in one or two customers; the merchant or spot capacity the project intends to fill without commitment; the stated contract duration; and the renewal assumptions the model applies at expiry. Where a single customer underwrites a large share of stabilized revenue, the study models the loss of that customer explicitly rather than treating the concentration as a footnote.
There is no universal acceptable percentage of contracted capacity, and this firm does not publish one. A project with sixty per cent committed to an investment-grade food manufacturer on a ten-year term is a different credit from a project with sixty per cent committed to three regional distributors on annual renewals, and both differ again from a merchant facility in a market with proven excess demand. What the study must demonstrate is the project-specific support for the assumption used — who the customer is, what the agreement obliges, what happens at renewal, and what the coverage looks like if the commitment does not hold.
Square footage alone misrepresents cold-storage capacity, and relying on it is one of the most common errors in weak market studies. Two buildings of identical footprint can differ by a factor of two or more in pallet positions depending on clear height, racking system, aisle configuration, whether the racking is selective, drive-in, push-back or mobile, and how much of the floor is given to dock, staging and blast-freezing space. A competitor set measured in square feet will therefore understate or overstate the real competitive supply, sometimes severely.
The analysis counts positions instead, by temperature zone, because freezer positions and cooler positions do not compete for the same customers. Against that supply the study sets surveyed occupancy, the announced and permitted pipeline, and the subject's own proposed position count, then derives the occupied positions the subject must capture to reach its projected stabilization — and expresses that as a share of the demand the market analysis independently supports. Merchant capacity is carried separately from contracted capacity throughout, because the two carry different fill risk.
Where a facility type is better measured by another unit — cubic feet for bulk commodity storage, tonnes for certain protein and seafood operations, throughput movements for a pure cross-dock — the study uses that metric and states why. Imposing a single standardised capacity metric on every project produces a tidy report and an unreliable one.
Four categories of input account for the majority of coverage-ratio movement in a cold storage pro forma. Each is tested explicitly rather than held constant, because a lender's credit decision depends on understanding which assumption, if wrong, breaks the project.
Because the Excel model contains no hardcoded values, any reviewer can change any of these inputs and observe the effect on debt-service coverage in real time through the secure client portal.
Electricity is usually the largest controllable operating line in a refrigerated warehouse, and it does not behave like a general inflation item. The study models consumption against the refrigerated volume and zone temperatures the project actually proposes, then prices it against the serving utility's published tariff rather than a national average rate — because the tariff structure, not the headline cost per kilowatt-hour, frequently decides the outcome. Demand charges assessed on peak load, time-of-use periods, ratchet clauses that hold a demand charge in place for months after a single peak, and any interruptible or economic-development rate the project may qualify for are each carried explicitly.
Alongside power sit refrigeration equipment maintenance, compressor and evaporator service, the reserve required for eventual plant replacement, and any backup or resiliency assumption the project makes — standby generation, redundant compressors, or contracted emergency service — where the customer base requires it. The commissioning schedule matters to the model as well, because a refrigeration plant that reaches temperature later than planned delays first revenue while fixed cost is already running.
Specific refrigerant systems and technical configurations are described only where the project's own engineering documentation establishes them; ammonia and HFC systems carry materially different capital costs, regulatory obligations and insurance treatment, and the study reflects whichever the project has actually specified. This is financial and feasibility analysis of the operating cost consequences, not engineering design or system selection.
A cold storage site is judged on how goods reach it and leave it. The study examines highway and interstate access and the practical truck route from it, on-site circulation and trailer staging, dock count and configuration against projected inbound and outbound movements, and — where the commodity flow justifies it — rail siding potential, intermodal access and port proximity. Proximity to food production on the inbound side and to population and distribution centres on the outbound side sets the service radius the demand analysis relies on.
On the site itself, the analysis addresses available electrical service capacity and the cost and lead time of any required upgrade, water and sewer capacity for sanitation and any processing use, workforce availability at the wage the model assumes, zoning and permitted use, flood exposure, the findings of environmental and geotechnical reports where they exist, and the construction staging the site can physically accommodate. Any of these can convert an attractive market into an infeasible project, and the study reports them as constraints rather than as background.
Revenue is built in separate streams rather than as a blended rate: contracted storage by pallet position and temperature zone, merchant or spot storage at its own fill assumption and rate, handling revenue on inbound and outbound movements, throughput-based charges where the customer agreements provide for them, and ancillary services such as blast freezing, labelling, repacking or cross-docking where the facility is equipped for them.
Expenses carry electricity at the modelled tariff, payroll at surveyed local wage rates for the staffing plan the operation actually needs, repairs and maintenance, refrigeration-specific service, insurance priced for a single-purpose refrigerated asset, management, property taxes at the assessment the project will face rather than the current assessment of raw land, and replacement reserves.
Capital covers construction of the insulated envelope, the refrigeration plant, racking, dock and material-handling equipment, professional fees, contingency and the working capital required to carry the operation through fill-up.
Underwriting ties them together. The model runs a ten-year linked projection in which the income statement, balance sheet and cash-flow statement are computed from the same assumption set, so a change to occupancy, rate or utility cost flows through coverage automatically rather than being re-keyed. Against that the study reports the stabilization date, debt service, DSCR by year, breakeven occupancy, and sensitivity cases run independently on revenue, utility cost, construction cost and interest rate — then the combined downside case, which is usually the one that decides the credit.
Cold-chain projects present a specific set of credit concerns that differ from general industrial or food-processing loans, and the feasibility study must address each directly.
Under SBA SOP 50 10 8, the study must demonstrate 1.15x operating debt-service coverage and 1.00x global coverage. For a cold storage project, the reviewing analyst will focus on whether merchant pallet revenue is supported by demonstrated demand or is speculative fill, and whether the refrigeration operating cost is realistic given the local utility tariff. Studies that aggregate anchor and merchant revenue without separating them do not survive SBA technical review.
USDA Business & Industry engagements under RD Staff Instruction 5001 require the study to address rural food-system impact, job creation or retention, and the borrower's capacity to service the guaranteed debt. Cold storage projects financed under B&I are frequently positioned as rural food-distribution infrastructure; the study must connect the project's throughput to that policy purpose without overstating it.
Conventional lenders typically require 1.20x coverage and place additional weight on lease-up risk and anchor-tenant credit quality. A lender financing a speculative merchant facility will scrutinize the competitive supply pipeline; the study addresses this by documenting announced projects, their probable delivery dates, and the effect of that new supply on achievable rack rates. The fiduciary duty in every engagement runs to the lender and reviewing agency, not to the borrower, and no fee is contingent on the finding.
Every engagement begins with a fixed fee quoted in writing within one business day of inquiry. The fee does not change based on the finding, the loan amount, or the program. There are no contingent arrangements. The quote is issued after a brief review of the project description to confirm scope; cold storage projects with complex multi-temperature configurations or port-adjacent logistics components are scoped accordingly.
Standard delivery is ten to fifteen business days from receipt of a complete data room. The data room for a cold storage project typically includes executed or draft anchor-tenant agreements, utility interconnection and rate documentation, the construction budget and site plan, the borrower's historical financials if an operating company is involved, and any existing market studies or appraisals. Incomplete data rooms delay delivery; the engagement clock starts when the room is complete, not when the retainer is received. Rush delivery is available and is quoted at the time of engagement.
On delivery, the bound narrative report and the fully linked Excel model are published to a secure client portal. The model remains live: when a reviewer changes an input — a rack rate, a utility cost, an occupancy assumption — every schedule recalculates without manual intervention. This is not a static PDF exhibit; it is the working analytical instrument the lender's credit officer and the agency's loan analyst can interrogate directly. The explicit statement of conditions travels with every report, identifying the factual premises the projections depend on and the circumstances under which conclusions would change.
Cold storage and food-logistics engagements are directed by Donald Safranek, MSc, principal of Wert-Berater, Inc., who is responsible for the determinations in the report. The firm's qualifications are in market, economic, financial and management analysis for institutional and agency lending; it holds no refrigeration or mechanical engineering credentials, no USDA or SBA approval status, and no lender certification, and it does not represent otherwise. Related work is documented under food and beverage manufacturing, meat and poultry processing, seafood processing, dairy processing, industrial facilities and the USDA OneRD guaranteed loan programme. Last reviewed 2 September 2026.
The fee is fixed and quoted in writing within one business day of inquiry. It does not vary with the loan amount or the finding, and no arrangement is contingent on outcome. Cold storage projects with multi-temperature zones, port-adjacent logistics, or complex anchor-tenant structures are scoped individually before the quote is issued.
Standard delivery is ten to fifteen business days from receipt of a complete data room. The data room for a cold storage project must include anchor-tenant agreements or letters of intent, utility rate and interconnection documentation, the construction budget, and borrower financials where applicable. Rush delivery is available and is quoted at engagement. The clock starts when the data room is complete.
Three factors distinguish cold storage from dry industrial underwriting: refrigeration energy cost is a large, volatile operating line that depends on utility tariff structure rather than general inflation; anchor-tenant commitment is the primary revenue underpin, and its absence forces the model to rely on speculative merchant fill; and construction cost for insulated panel systems and refrigeration plant is more volatile than standard tilt-wall. Each of these must be stress-tested independently.
USDA RD Staff Instruction 5001 requires an independent feasibility study for most B&I guaranteed loans above the applicable threshold. Independence means the analyst's fee is not contingent on the finding and the determination is not subject to revision at the borrower's request. A study prepared by the borrower's development team or a consultant whose fee depends on the project proceeding does not meet that standard.
No feasibility study guarantees loan approval. The study provides an independent analytical determination of whether the project, as proposed, meets the financial and market standards the program requires. Approval decisions rest with the lender and the agency. The study is prepared to pass technical review without exception items; whether the credit is ultimately approved involves factors beyond the scope of the feasibility analysis.
A complete data room for a cold storage project includes the site location and service-radius description, executed or draft anchor-tenant agreements or letters of intent, the construction budget and site plan, utility rate schedules and any interconnection agreements, the proposed financing structure and loan amount, and borrower historical financials if an operating company is involved. The engagement clock starts when the data room is confirmed complete.
A cold storage feasibility study consultant determines, independently of the borrower, whether a proposed refrigerated warehouse will fill its pallet positions at the rates assumed and generate cash flow sufficient to service the debt. That means measuring regional cold-chain demand from food production, processing, distribution and trade flows; counting competing supply in pallet positions by temperature zone and surveying its occupancy and rates; testing the project's executed storage agreements and letters of intent; modelling refrigeration energy, labour and maintenance cost against the serving utility's actual tariff; and running a ten-year financial projection with coverage and sensitivity testing.
The consultant's duty runs to the lender and the agency rather than to the borrower, and the fee is not contingent on the finding. The deliverable is a determination the credit officer can rely on, including where that determination is that the project as proposed is not feasible.
Demand is built from the physical flow of temperature-sensitive goods through the market, not from a national growth rate. The analysis quantifies regional agricultural and protein production, food and beverage manufacturing output, grocery and foodservice distribution activity, and import or export volumes moving through nearby ports, airports and border crossings. Those flows are then filtered by the commodity categories the subject facility can actually serve at its proposed temperature zones, and bounded by the practical service radius from the site — typically governed by drive time to the customers and the shelf life of the product.
Against that gross demand the study sets existing competitive capacity and its measured occupancy, plus permitted and announced projects that will be open by stabilization. What remains is the unmet demand available to the subject, from which the required capture is derived. Where the project depends on displacing an incumbent rather than serving growth, the study says so explicitly, because that is a materially harder case to underwrite.
Pallet positions are the unit in which cold-storage capacity, occupancy and revenue are actually transacted, so the market study counts them rather than square feet. Two facilities with the same footprint can differ substantially in position count depending on clear height, racking type — selective, drive-in, push-back or mobile — aisle configuration, and how much floor area is given over to dock, staging and freezing space.
Positions are counted separately by temperature zone, because freezer and cooler capacity serve different customers and command different rates. Competitor positions and their surveyed occupancy establish the supply side; the subject's proposed positions establish what must be filled; and the ratio between the two, tested against independently derived demand, produces the required capture rate that the financial model then has to justify.
An anchor customer converts a speculative single-purpose development into a contracted cash-flow stream, which is why lenders weigh anchor commitment heavily in cold storage. The study examines what the anchor agreement actually obliges: committed pallet positions or committed throughput, the rate, the term, escalation, termination provisions, and what happens at renewal.
Concentration is then measured and tested rather than simply noted. Where one customer represents a large share of stabilized revenue, the model runs the loss of that customer as an explicit downside case and reports the resulting coverage. The study also considers the counterparty's own financial standing where the credit depends on it, because a commitment is only as good as the party giving it. There is no universal threshold for how much contracted capacity is enough; the requirement is that the specific commitment be evidenced and its failure modelled.
Merchant or spot capacity — space let short-term at prevailing rates rather than under contract — is carried as a separate line from contracted capacity throughout the model, because it fills more slowly, prices more volatilely and carries materially higher risk. The analysis supports any merchant fill assumption with evidence from the market: surveyed occupancy at competing facilities, whether operators report turning business away, seasonal peaks in the local commodity cycle, and the rates actually quoted for short-term storage.
Seasonality matters particularly here. A market driven by a harvest or a fishing season may show high merchant occupancy for part of the year and substantial vacancy for the rest, and a model built on the peak will overstate annual revenue. The study forecasts merchant occupancy monthly where the commodity flow requires it, and the sensitivity cases test what coverage looks like if merchant fill lags the projection.
Consumption is estimated from the refrigerated volume, the temperature zones proposed, and the throughput the facility will handle, since inbound warm product drives refrigeration load as much as static storage does. That consumption is then priced against the serving utility's published tariff rather than an average national rate.
The tariff structure is frequently more consequential than the headline energy rate. Demand charges assessed on peak load, time-of-use pricing, ratchet provisions that carry a single peak forward for months, and any interruptible or economic-development rate for which the project may qualify are each modelled explicitly. Refrigeration maintenance, compressor and evaporator service, plant replacement reserves and any backup generation the customer base requires are carried alongside. Because utility cost is both large and volatile, it receives its own sensitivity case in every cold storage study this firm issues.
A credit officer reads a refrigerated warehouse study for four things. First, evidence of demand that is specific to the market and the commodity flow rather than borrowed from national cold-storage growth statistics. Second, a competitive supply analysis counted in pallet positions with surveyed occupancy and rates, including the pipeline that will exist at stabilization. Third, the contracted revenue base — what is executed, with whom, for how long, and how concentrated. Fourth, a financial model in which the coverage conclusion is traceable to those inputs and stress-tested against them.
The study is written to be reviewed. Sources are cited, competitor survey data is presented rather than summarised, the assumption set is stated in one place, and the sensitivity cases are shown rather than described. The objective is a report that passes lender, agency and third-party review without exception items.
Yes. Cold storage and refrigerated distribution are frequently financed under USDA Rural Development guaranteed lending, and an independent feasibility study is required or strongly indicated for most such credits. The firm's cold-chain engagements include work performed for the lender and USDA Rural Development, and studies are prepared to the applicable USDA Rural Development standards for content, independence and analyst qualification.
Independence in the USDA sense means the analyst's fee is not contingent on the finding and the determination is not subject to revision at the borrower's request. A study prepared by the borrower, by an affiliate, or by a consultant whose engagement is conditioned on a favourable outcome will not satisfy that requirement. Programme requirements are verified against the current agency instruction at engagement, since they are revised periodically.
Yes. Refrigerated warehouse and cold storage projects are commonly financed under SBA 7(a) and 504, and SBA SOP 50 10 8 requires or strongly indicates an independent feasibility study where historical operating performance cannot by itself demonstrate repayment ability — which describes most ground-up cold storage developments, substantial expansions and changes of ownership.
Cold storage also tends to be treated as a special-purpose property, which raises the evidentiary bar: the building has limited alternative use, so the loan is repaid by the operating business or not at all. The study is scoped accordingly, with the operating analysis carrying at least as much weight as the real-estate analysis. Current SBA requirements are confirmed against the operative SOP at engagement rather than assumed.
Coverage is reported by year across the full projection rather than at stabilization alone, because a cold storage project's weakest coverage usually falls during fill-up, not at maturity. From the base case the model runs independent sensitivity cases on the variables that actually move a refrigerated warehouse: occupied pallet positions, achieved storage and handling rates, utility cost, construction cost and interest rate.
Each is tested in isolation to identify which variable the credit is most exposed to, and then a combined downside case is run — slower fill, softer rates and higher energy cost together — since these tend to occur in the same conditions rather than independently. The study reports the breakeven occupancy at which coverage reaches 1.00x, which is often the single most useful figure in the report for a credit officer.
A business plan is prepared by or for the borrower and presents the project as the sponsor intends to execute it. It is an advocacy document, and legitimately so. A feasibility study is prepared independently for the lender or the agency and tests whether the project as proposed can succeed, using evidence gathered by the analyst rather than supplied by the sponsor.
The practical differences show up in three places. The feasibility study surveys competitors directly instead of relying on the sponsor's market description; it can and does conclude that a project is not feasible; and its fee is not contingent on the finding. Most lenders and both federal programmes require the independent study specifically because the business plan cannot serve that function, and submitting the latter in place of the former will not satisfy the requirement.
They answer different questions and both are usually needed. A refrigeration engineer designs the system — selects the refrigerant and equipment, sizes the plant, specifies controls and insulation, addresses code and safety compliance, and issues stamped drawings. A feasibility consultant determines whether the facility that engineer designs can be filled, operated and financed at the cost and revenue assumed.
Wert-Berater performs the second role only. The firm does not perform mechanical or refrigeration engineering, does not issue stamped drawings, does not provide architectural design and does not commission refrigeration systems. Where engineering documentation exists it is used as an input — the plant specification drives the capital budget and the energy model — and is relied upon as prepared by the qualified professional who issued it. Where it does not yet exist, the study states the assumption standing in its place so the lender can see what remains unverified.
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Wert-Berater, Inc. is an independent provider of feasibility studies and other related services. The firm does not provide financing or equity investment advice, and does not arrange, broker, or place debt or equity capital of any kind.
All appraisal assignments are performed by Bruce E. Jones, MAI, ASA-GC, BCA, CMEA, a member of the Appraisal Institute since 2006, a staff member of Wert-Berater, Inc. and owner of Special Purpose Realty Valuation.