Sydney, Australia: Woolworths is planning to open a temperature-controlled food distribution centre in Greater Western Sydney following surging demand, particularly from its booming online grocery business.
The multi-storey 60,000sq metre square distribution centre will be built on an 8.6 hectare site Woolworths owns in Wetherill Park, west of Parramatta.
The co-location of fresh and chilled operations would provide significant transport and environmental benefits by consolidating freight loads. Woolworths said this would help remove more than 11,000 truck movements from Sydney’s roads each year.
Once complete, the temperature-controlled site would have the capacity to sort and deliver more than 3,700 fresh produce and chilled items to more than 285 supermarkets.
Woolworths’ planned investment comes amid surging demand for specialist cold storage sites from food retailers and pharmaceutical companies.
Phil Pearce, chief executive of logistics platform ESR Australia, told the Australian Financial Review that more than 80% of enquiries to develop warehousing on sites it owned were from organisations wanting temperature-controlled facilities for either pharmaceutical or perishable food products
“This is a trend we expect to continue, along with the demand generated by the e-commerce boom,” Pearce said.
