Dutch Harbor Cold Storage Built By Skagit County Firm

Dutch Harbor, Alaska — Industrial Resources, Inc., has completed construction of Kloosterboer’s 80,000 sq ft cold storage facility in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Dutch Harbor, a small town in the remote Aleutian Islands, has no local access to lumber, hardware, steel or pipe so every component had to be pre-planned and ordered far in advance of needed delivery. Putting the facility together was like an international jigsaw puzzle because components came from around the world. IRI assembled all the components including steel from Asia, lumber from the U.S., a freezer unit that came as a kit and specially designed interlocking wall panels that came from different parts of Europe. IRI also encouraged a neighboring Skagit County company, Skagit Readymix, to send a mobile batch plant and three mixer trucks to Dutch Harbor to supply the high strength concrete for this and a number of other projects on the island.

Construction began on the building in March 2009 and was completed in six months despite severe spring storms and unusually cold weather. The 80,000 sq ft building is 50 feet tall, maintains a consistent -25ºC and can hold 20,000 tons of Alaska fish products, primarily Pollock.