Walmart announced last week a plan to open another high-tech fulfillment center, this time in California, by 2026.
This new 900,000 square-foot facility center, located at 150 Mariposa Road in Stockton, Calif., will help Walmart fulfill online orders across the west coast and will feature an “automated, high-density storage and retrieval system that streamlines a manual, 12-step process down to just five steps,” Walmart said in a release. This technology will help Walmart double the amount of customer orders it can fulfill per day.
“The announcement of our high-tech fulfillment center in Stockton commemorates yet another significant stride in our omni-channel retail efforts,” said Karisa Sprague, SVP, fulfillment network operations for Walmart U.S. “In response to increasing customer demand for online shopping, we are implementing technology to enhance delivery speed and accuracy for our customers, all the while creating new and exciting technology-empowered career paths for our associates.”
This center will be Walmart’s fifth “next-generation” fulfillment center that the retailer has begun rolling out across the country.
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In June of 2022, Walmart committed to opening four of these new centers over the following three years. These centers feature high-tech adjustments including robotics and machine learning and are meant to be strategically placed in locations that complement Walmart’s 4,700 stores and 210 distribution centers. The first of these centers opened in September 2022 in Joliet, Ill. This past June, Walmart opened its largest fulfillment center to date in McCordsville, Ind., a 2.2 million square-foot space which offered jobs to more than 1,000 Walmart employees.
More broadly, the goal of these new centers is to help Walmart speed up the order fulfillment process and ultimately be able to deliver next-day or two-day delivery to 95 percent of the U.S. population.
The new center in Stockton will offer jobs to more than 1,000 Walmart associates, including in tech-focused roles. Full-time roles are eligible for benefits including medical, vision and dental insurance, paid time off, stock purchasing plans and 401(k) matching.
“The new Stockton facility is another great example of how Walmart is people-led and tech-powered. It’s an investment in technology that will pave the way for good jobs and great careers for our associates,” said Maren Waggoner, SVP of end-to-end people operations at Walmart U.S. in a statement. “I look forward to seeing the positive impact this facility will have on the Central Valley community, creating new opportunities to work with cutting edge technology and lasting career growth with Walmart.”
Walmart currently operates eight distribution centers and four fulfillment centers in California.
In addition to the new high-tech fulfillment centers, Walmart in May opened a high-tech market fulfillment center in Arkansas, expanding the use of its stores as fulfillment centers. The new center is built within a Walmart store and is powered by a proprietary storage and retrieval system named Alphabot.
