Walmart has been growing within Canada for a while now, consistently grabbing new commercial real estate “CRE” opportunities all over the country. With how Wal-Mart’s Canadian portfolio seems to grow every day, this is great news for their further growth. New brick-and-mortar and online stores are coming up out of the woodworks everywhere to bring the best experiences to customers.
The newest distribution centre, located in Vaughan, Ontario, is another store in the chain making up more than 400 stores Canada-wide.
Breaking Ground with Condor Properties
Condor Properties, a local Vaughan real estate developer has teamed up with Walmart Canada to make this happen. Condor Properties boasts more than 100 diverse real estate properties in the Toronto area and the surrounding towns and cities.
The ground-breaking ceremony for these two partners’ and their new 550,000 ft2 Vaughan distribution centre was just held in August 2020. The project is expected to provide hundreds of jobs not only when the building opens and retail positions are available, but also job opportunities for local construction workers to build the facility.
The target location is at 11110 Jane Street. Not so far from residential and shopping areas so customers will be able to shop for any food or merchandise their hearts desire. It’s estimated that over 70 million products will be on the shelves coming from over 3,000 renowned suppliers, which far exceeds any other Walmart store that Canada offers so far.
The CEO and president of Wal-Mart Canada, Horacio Barbeito, couldn’t help but express his excitement about the project during the ceremony in August, saying: “These are challenging times for everyone, but we are investing for growth because we believe in Ontario and Canada’s future are proud to do business in this great country.”
The project aims for their slated completion in 2024.
Other Wal-Mart Canada’s Investments
Wal-Mart isn’t just working on this new storefront, they are set up to build many other distribution centres all throughout Canada, and some of are already in the process of development.
One such example is the new centre in Surrey, British Columbia, another grand project that aims to provide much more of Wal-Mart’s products with its 300,000 square feet of space.
The Wal-Mart distribution centre though, like the one in Cornwall, Ontario; has new plans to move towards renovating it. The upcoming improved centre will have more automated systems to help with managing health and beauty products, general merchandise, apparel, and more.
Retail investment of $3.5 Billion will benefit Canada
Only about a month ago, Wal-Mart Canada announced its newest five-year investment plan that is seen to be worth a whopping $3.5 billion, this will help Canada grow and prosper even further.
One of the things included in the plan is constructing more distribution centres and working to upgrade more than 150 of the already existing facilities to upgrade the shopping experiences to Canadian consumers and make it better.
The brick-and-mortar stores will be upgraded and made to work much smarter with digitization, and also adding new bigger self-checkouts. They will also start to introduce much more merchandise pick-up services, as well as hybrid locations for both a faster pickup and delivery for everyone.
This isn’t all though, they have the goal of having stores employ robotics and computer vision cameras to reduce any touchpoints; which helps to increase efficiency and accuracy.
Summary
Canada, and particularly Ontario, offers great potential in developments within retail commercial real estate, and it’s being recognized by many investors such as Wal-Mart. As Wal-Mart’s Canadian continues to grow, all of Canada’s consumers will have a much more efficient, faster and enjoyable shopping experience – both online and offline in-store.
The retail company aims to also make full use of the newest and best technology to help enhance Canada’s growth, partnering with a number of high-tech companies in the country.
Learn more about this and Walmarts growth in Canada here: