The new $100m centre was opened today. Photo / supplied
The new $100m centre was opened today. Photo / supplied
Right when food and supermarkets are such a focus, a new $100 million distribution centre has been opened three weeks early to cope with demand.
New Zealand's second-largest supermarket chain Countdown today opened its new Palmerston North building, which is 38,000sq m - three times bigger than the previous distribution centre it had there.
Sally Copland, director of e-commerce arm CountdownX, announced the opening this morning and said it was equivalent to four rugby fields.
"An eight-week transition period was originally planned for the new state-of-the-art centre, but with the country continuing in lockdown, Countdown has sped up this transition to help relieve some of the pressure in the North Island particularly," the company said today.
"In the last week, Countdown has sent just under 3.5 million cartons of food and groceries to its stores around the country, including an extra 100,000 crates of fresh fruit and vegetables, an increase of 25 per cent vs the week prior," it said.
More than 20,000 online shopping orders had been delivered to priority assistance customers since lockdown started, and a further 4500 customers added to Countdown's online priority assistance service, it said.
Priority assist is for people who can't leave their homes during lockdowns.
Ready to go: inside the new centre. Photo / supplied
By the end of September, the new DC will be delivering goods to 55 North Island Countdowns and when fully going, will move about 450,000 cartons of food and groceries weekly, nearly double the current volume from the old building.
Copland said the lockdown put the supermarket network under extreme pressure but the new DC was purposefully built to help cope with spikes like this and future-proof for growing populations.
"We have just over 1000 people working across our four distribution centres who this week have supported our stores and customers with nearly 3.5m cartons of food and groceries while working under strict Covid-19 safety protocols and dealing with the impact of team members who are isolating at home," Copland said.
Foodstuffs North Island, New Zealand's largest supermarket business, only opened its new distribution centre at Māngere around March this year.
That is New Zealand's largest new building and it is at Māngere. It is 77,000sq m and supplies groceries and goods for more than 100 stores like New Worlds, Pak'nSaves and Four Squares.
It works 24 hours a day, six days a week and was built beside the new 9000sq m head office in a project expert say could be worth around $250m. Neither Foodstuffs nor Auckland Airport which owns the land and buildings has put a value on the project but the buildings alone are estimated at around $160m.
Sally Copland of CountdownX. Photo / supplied
Copland said Countdown's Auckland DC was dealing with "incredible demand, and by opening Palmerston North early we'll be able to relieve some of that pressure and better service customers around the North Island during these unusual times," she said.
More than 10,000 contacts in locations of interest had put Countdown's online shopping services under "intense pressure over the last week".
"Usually around 12 per cent of our sales are online, which in itself is world-leading for an online grocery business, however this week we have seen more people than ever trying to shop online and it's fair to say that's been extremely challenging.
"You can have all the technology and innovation in the world, but fundamentally people are at the heart of online shopping too," Copland said.
