Walmart plans to support its growing e-commerce business with its first fulfilment centre in the state of Utah.
The discount giant is building a new one million-plus-square-feet fulfilment centre in Salt Lake City, scheduled to open in summer 2022. The facility will fulfil online orders placed on Walmart.com.
The new hub is expected to create approximately 450 full-time, permanent jobs across the region. Unlike distribution centres, which are focused on receiving, storing and distributing product to Walmart stores, fulfilment centres are focused on storing millions of items that are picked, packed and shipped directly to customers as soon as next-day.
The facility is part of a broader initiative to add more capacity into Walmart’s supply chain as the retailer prepares for continuing growth. In the third quarter of fiscal 2022, Walmart US e-commerce sales grew eight per cent for the quarter and 87 per cent over the past two years.
Walmart has been ramping up its supply chain infrastructure, from expanding its successful pilot of store-based, high-tech “local fulfilment centres” to applying artificial intelligence to the palletising of products in its regional distribution centres. More recently, the discount giant said it will build a high-tech distribution centre for fresh and frozen groceries in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, as well as two high-tech supply chain hubs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and a high-tech centre in Lebanon, Tennessee, where human associates, artificial intelligence (AI) software, and automated robots working together to ship orders to customers as efficiently as possible.
