Supermarket giant Woolworths has started construction on the first of two state-of-the-art distribution centres in Sydney’s south-west to strengthen its national supply chain to more than 1000 of its stores across the country.

Set to open in 2024, the Moorebank National Distribution Centre will be run under Woolworths’ supply chain arm, Primary Connect, and will be co-located with the Moorebank Regional Distribution Centre, which will start construction later and open in 2025.

Once completed the 75,000 square metre area, across both sites, will take up the space of five SCG ovals. The combined sites will be highly automated to enable Woolworths to keep up with customer demand for an expanded range of products in the stores.

Woolworths will invest about $700 million to $780 million in the technology and fitout of both distribution centres in partnership with Dematic and Vanderlande. Qube will invest about $440 million to build the distribution centres, with Woolworths signing an initial 20-year lease.

Even though online shopping is growing rapidly, consumers are returning to the physical stores for smaller, more frequent trips.

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci said to keep pace with growing demand and ever-evolving customer expectations, there is a need to continue to invest in new technology and capacity to power the next generation supply chain.

“We have ambitions to offer a more tailored range of products in our stores. This has traditionally been constrained by what we can hold in our distribution centres,” he said.

read more: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/woolworths-starts-construction-at-the-1-2b-moorebank-distribution-hub-20210520-p57tpp.html