Market Overview

Based on domestic sales, the estimated size of the cold chain logistics market reached 1.87 trillion yen in FY2024, marking a 3.9% increase from the previous fiscal year. The market has been growing since surpassing the pre-pandemic level in FY2022. This growth is primarily due to rising logistics unit prices rather than increased volumes.

The domestic consumption volume of frozen food, which is the most popular type of freight for cold chain logistics, has remained stable over the past three years. This has prevented significant increases in the capacity of cold storage warehouses during that period. However, rising transportation unit prices, which comprise labor, energy (e.g., electricity and fuel), and storage costs (withdrawal and deposit, as well as stevedore expenses), have increased logistics costs and appear to have driven the market growth.

Noteworthy Topics

Relationships Between Increased Cold Food Transactions and the Supply and Demand for Cold and Frozen Storage Warehouses

The increase in cold food transactions has tightened the capacity of cold and frozen storage warehouses. In recent years, high-quality frozen food, with larger volume per product, has increased in variety, limiting the number of products per storage area. Consequently, these warehouses are always operating at full capacity. Additionally, the increase in frozen product imports has led to a noticeable shortage of storage space, especially in coastal areas. While constructing new warehouses and expanding existing ones are necessary to meet storage demands, measures need to be figured out to secure new storage facilities, though difficult even in coastal areas. Since demand for frozen foods, including imports, is likely to continue growing, meeting the demand for warehouses is an important challenge in the cold chain logistics market.   

Future Outlook

Based on domestic sales, the cold chain logistics market is forecast to reach 1.94 trillion yen in FY2025, marking a 3.7% increase from the previous fiscal year and indicating continued moderate growth. However, as in FY2024, this growth is driven by rising logistics unit prices, rather than freight volumes. Overall food freight volume is highly likely to level off or moderately decline due to sluggish consumption resulting from increased commodity prices, as well as the long-term aging population and declining birthrate.

Research Outline