Now winery customers can save money on storage, cut out extra steps in the distribution process and maintain constant safe temperatures for the wine.
Railex, a refrigerated rail transport company, offers five-day, non-stop refrigerated shipping from its Burbank warehouse to a similar facility in Rotterdam, New York.
The cars are never separated or changed during the trip, which means there’s no chance of cars being left behind or product being lost. And the company provides GPS monitoring of each car, allowing customers to monitor progress and the status of the refrigeration system.
Joe Fraser, Ste. Michelle’s vice president of operations and supply chain, said the winery has been using Railex for more than a year to ship its wine and now is storing wine at the facility, as well.
Previously the company used refrigerated trucks to ship hundreds of thousands of cases of wine each year to the East Coast. The company had tried traditional rail service, which is less expensive than trucking, but there were too many risk factors, Fraser said.
The rail schedules were inconsistent — sometimes the wine would get to the East Coast in two weeks, other times it took four.
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