Walmart Canada plans to spend $175 million to build a 300,000-square-foot fulfillment centre in Surrey's Campbell Heights Business Park, the discount retailer announced July 26.
This centre will be in addition to the 74,000-square-foot distribution centre that Walmart (NYSE:WMT) is subleasing from Sustainable Produce Urban Delivery (SPUD) in Burnaby – a centre that is part of a partnership, with SPUD set to start delivering groceries later this summer for Walmart customers.
The future Surrey distribution centre will have space for frozen foods and produce as well as for shelf-stable groceries and other products.
Walmart does not expect that its future Surrey distribution centre will be operational until 2022, and construction on the site is not set to begin until early 2021.
Walmart noted that the future Surrey site will employ between 150 and 200 people.
This future Surrey site will be Walmart's first distribution centre in Metro Vancouver that it operates with its own employees. Its other distribution centres in Canada are in Calgary, Cornwall and Mississauga.
Walmart is the world's largest bricks-and-mortar retailer and it has been making recent moves to increase its e-commerce competitiveness. Its move in early January last year to spend $70 million to buy Shoebuy.com heightened competition in the online-shoe sector to the extent that Vancouver's Shoes.com announced a few weeks later that it would shut down immediately. Walmart then bought Shoes.com's assets and Shoebuy.com's website now defaults to the Shoes.com domain.
Walmart's competition in the online-sales space is indisputably Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN) which already has two large fulfillment centres in Metro Vancouver in addition to office space. One is in Delta, while the other one is in New Westminster, next to the Braid Street Skytrain station.
Walmart noted in a press release that its future Surrey site will deliver fresh produce and frozen grocery products to 60 Walmart locations across the province.
It also touted its future Surrey site for being "zero-waste" and having many sustainability features – something that is largely expected today.
Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner called the building’s sustainable design a “novel, forward-thinking approach.”
“We are pleased to hear that the projected plan for the facility features an elevated design with a smaller footprint when compared to traditional warehouse facilities.”
