Surrey to get $175M Walmart warehouse
300,000-square-foot distribution centre will feature advanced technology, retailer says
Walmart Canada will spend $175 million to build a hightech and highly automated perishables distribution centre in Surrey’s Campbell Heights Business Park, which the company is describing as a “flagship” example internationally.
They’re calling it a fulfilment centre. At 300,000 square feet, about the size of 3½ CFL-sized football fields including the endzones, the facility will be smaller than a typical Walmart distribution centre. But senior vice-president John Bayliss said the advanced technology allows Walmart to shrink the footprint by about 30 per cent.
“We’ve wanted to find a way to better serve our customers in British Columbia for a long time,” Bayliss said. He said the biggest challenge was finding a site in the Lower Mainland’s high-priced real estate market.
Walmart has been serving its 60 B.C. stores from facilities in Calgary and a third-party warehouse in Richmond, but Bayliss said the company wanted a better option for the growth it is experiencing west of the Rockies.
“We needed to add capacity,” Bayliss said. “Our choice was expanding where we are, or adding a node in B.C.”
“And using technology, we’ve been able to build that new node.”
In an emailed statement, Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner said the city welcomes Walmart’s project, which she termed “a significant, positive economic impact on our community.”
Hepner said the facility’s more compact design “is a novel, forward-thinking approach,” to help conserve the region’s rare industrial land.
Walmart is still early in its process. Construction isn’t slated to start until 2021 to open in 2022, Bayliss said, but the plan is to use the latest-generation of automated technology — cranes and robots — that will work alongside technicians and other workers.
“Essentially it’s automated storage that allows us to go up,” Bayliss said, explaining the building will be higher than the typical warehouse rather than sprawling hori- zontally. The technology means the new warehouse will have 150 to 200 employees, compared to the 200 to 700 at other Walmart warehouses.
“It’s important to note in all this, it’s still 150 to 200 jobs that are going to be created,” Bayliss said. “It’s not 100 per cent automated.”
The distribution centre will primarily handle perishables — meat, produce, dairy and frozen foods — along with top-selling grocery items such as cereals and pasta.
Walmart’s intent is to distribute food to its stores but Bayliss said it will also be able to handle its agreement with Food-X Urban Delivery Inc. to provide delivery service to Walmart customers in Metro Vancouver.
Food-X is a subsidiary of the delivery firm Sustainable Produce Urban Delivery.
Walmart also plans to build the centre as a “zero-waste” facility, which will incorporate features such as LED lighting, efficient refrigeration, an HVAC system designed to recover waste heat from refrigeration and electric vehicles to reduce its impact on the environment.
Nationally, the grocery sector is becoming a tougher business, according to food-distribution expert Sylvain Charlebois, who is tracking the trend of consumers spending less of their food budgets at big-box stores.
“(Statistics Canada) reports that retail food sales have been down in four of the last five months,” said Charlebois, dean of the faculty of management at Dalhousie University.
Bayliss, however, said Walmart’s sales and customer traffic remains strong and the company has had success with its own convenience factor, pick-and-collect online shopping. Other grocers, such as Save-On-Foods and Super Store, have also adopted the sales method.
“Many markets coast to coast are seeing market gains versus traditional grocers,” Bayliss said.