Walmart Canada plans to spend $175 million to build a 300,000-square-foot fulfillment centre in Surrey, the discount retailer announced July 26.
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, including Fort St. John.
It also touted its future Surrey site for being "zero-waste" and having many sustainability features – something that is largely expected today.
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.
It was unclear as of press time whether Walmart will continue to use the 74,000-square-foot distribution centre that it is subleasing from Sustainable Produce Urban Delivery (SPUD) in Burnaby – a centre that is part of a partnership with SPUD delivering groceries for Walmart customers.
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.
