Walmart's taking a new approach to supplying its grocery departments, and that's expected to deliver jobs to South Jersey.
The retail giant has announced construction of a 700,000-square-foot warehouse for perishable products in Pilesgrove, Salem County.
The high-tech, refrigerated facility will begin operations in 2027, bringing about 400 jobs to the area, a spokesman said.
The warehouse is one of five opened or planned by Walmart, which is seeking to modernize its supply chain.
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The first "perishable distribution center" opened in California in 2021 and another is "ramping up" in Texas, according to an account from Dave Guggina, an executive overseeing supply chain operations.
Others are planned for South Carolina and Illinois.
The new warehouses will offer more speed and capacity, Guggina noted.
He said the facilities "can store double the number of cases and process more than twice the volume of a traditional perishable DC [distribution center]."
As part of its new approach, Walmart also is expanding four traditional distribution centers and retrofitting a fifth to handle more groceries.
None of those facilities are in this region.
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The Pilesgrove project will rise in a rural area on the 500 block of Pointers Auburn Road, near the New Jersey Turnpike and Interstate 295.
It comes after Walmart earlier this year announced plans to close a traditional warehouse in nearby Pedricktown,, Salem County.
Layoffs for about 270 workers in the Pedricktown building are to take effect in early September, according to a notice filed in May with the state Department of Labor.
Walmart, which describes itself as the nation's largest grocery retailer, says the new approach to perishables storage will create jobs that reflect a high-tech approach to retailing.
"For example, associates that used to manually stack cases may work in a high-tech facility as an automation equipment operator," the company said in a statement.
Under its new approach, Walmasrt said, cases that arrive from suppliers are inspected, removed from their pallets and then moved to an automated storage system "that stretches nearly 80 feet tall and operates in a temperature-controlled environment."
The system then retrieves the cases from storage to build store-ready pallets organized by department, "making them easier to unload at the store."
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Email: Jwalsh@cpsj.com.
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