North Carolina Ports aims to become the cold gateway of the Mid-Atlantic by 2031, Brian Clark, N.C. Ports' executive director said Thursday during the organization’s annual Cold Chain Summit.

“We will build a leading customer-trusted cold chain gateway for perishables and temperature-sensitive goods serving the Mid-Atlantic,” Clark said. “With continued focus on growing year-round fresh flows, we will capture a greater percentage of North Carolina export flows. We will further expand into the life sciences and health care verticals. Our efforts will lead to the full utilization of capacity both on and off port and continued expansion to support future growth.”

The Cold Chain Summit, held at the Hotel Ballast in downtown Wilmington, brought together an array of professionals from the cold storage, supply chain and logistics industries. This year’s event focused on highlighting partnerships in the cold chain sector.

Leading in cold chain is one of four strategic focus areas outlined in the ports’ recently adopted strategic plan, which will guide the organization in the coming years, Clark told attendees. 

Other focus areas for N.C. Ports, which includes two deep-water ports in Wilmington and Morehead City along with an inland terminal in Charlotte, are driving integrated bulk solutions, seizing breakbulk opportunities, and winning by serving North Carolina.

By 2031, that would look like a 12% increase in container volume, 54,000 refrigerated TEUs moving through the port system annually, a 7% year-over-year uptick in cargo volumes, along with more than $170 million in external or third-party investment and a $19 billion annual economic output by N.C. Ports, Clark said.

Despite those goals, Clark acknowledged that 2026 would be “another extremely challenging year” amid uncertainty caused by tariffs and other disruptions to global trade. 

Hans Bean, chief commercial officer at N.C. Ports, touted recent investments in the cold chain.

“Just in the last couple of years, over 2 million square feet of cold capacity has been added to support growing production, food processing, and distribution requirements across both North Carolina and the region,” he said.

The port completed the first phase of its refrigerated container yard in 2020 and later expanded the facility with a second phase. Cold Summit Development completed an approximately 300,000-square-foot cold storage facility near the port in 2024. 

In Pender County, the Danish shipping company Maersk’s subsidiary, Performance Team, has also opened a cold storage warehouse, and Lewis Nursery and Farms is a partner with the port at its cold-treatment and storage facility.

“It’s not one market anymore, it’s not one segment,” Bean said, “but we know that cold chain is prevalent … and more consumers are consuming, whether it’s farm or whether it’s food, higher quality goods that require cold chain.”

The event's panels highlighted the importance of trust and relationships in the cold chain sector, navigating cross-border complexities when transporting perishable goods and the ways technology and the growing role of technology and other innovations.

The summit’s keynote speaker, Erez Agmoni, highlighted ways the cold chain sector could deploy AI, data and other smart infrastructure to reduce the spoilage of food, pharmaceuticals and other perishable products. Agmoni is the co-founder and general partner at Interwoven Ventures, an investor in robotics, AI and automation startups focused on the supply chain and industrial operation sectors.

Today’s supply chain is fragmented, Agmoni said, with many people handling each product during transport. Small delays can have a big impact on when a product is delivered and whether it is spoiled by the time of delivery.

“What we’re missing is really risk prediction before it’s even failed,” he said. “Before the temperature goes above certain numbers, below certain numbers, you have to have some prediction (saying), ‘this is going the wrong direction, and it's going to fail.’”

Agmoni said AI could play a key role in predicting the points in a supply chain where perishable goods could be at risk of spoiling. Beyond predicting and recognizing a potential problem, it’s important to prioritize the goods and take action before they spoil.

“Alerts are very, very useful,” he said, “but we have to make some decision on top of that.”

Agmoni said he sees ports playing an expanded role in the future when it comes to the prioritization and orchestration of perishable cargoes and offered examples of how AI, drones, autonomous trains and other smart technology are being experimented with and used in other sectors.

“The future is not really defined by who sees more," he said, "it’s by who can actually act on what they see.”