IKEA opens new DC in U.S. Midwest

JOLIET, Ill. – IKEA has opened the doors of its U.S. Midwest distribution centre in Joliet, Illinois.

The DC will serve the inventory needs of stores throughout the Midwestern U.S., as well as fulfilling online customer orders. The 1.25-million-square-foot distribution centre was built on a 72-acre property located at the Laraway Crossings Business Park, 48 miles southwest of Chicago.

“We are thankful for the City of Joliet’s support of this project and excited to officially open our doors,” said Eric Poli, site manager.

“We are proud to be the first IKEA owned-and-operated distribution center in the Midwest region, resulting in lower transportation costs and faster deliveries to customers and retail stores.”

The new Joliet facility is equipped with automation technology on a scale unlike anything currently in use within the IKEA customer fulfillment network, and which allows for increased storage capacity. The design of the Joliet facility increases co-worker efficiency due to the proximity of the dock doors to the automated storage system.

Staff use forklifts to drive pallets into a machine called an interface station, which eventually feeds the pallet into storage. This technology allows the Joliet distribution centre to provide 50 percent more storage capacity than any other IKEA facility.

The Joliet facility successfully completed its first outbound shipment to the IKEA Bolingbrook and Schaumburg stores (each approximately 30 miles outside of Chicago) last month. In the coming weeks, additional IKEA stores in the Midwest will begin receiving inventory from Joliet.

The Joliet DC is LEED Gold Certified, a first for IKEA properties in the U.S. A key environmental highlight is its 268,920-square-foot solar array built with 9,036 solar panels, currently the largest in Illinois.

The array will produce approximately 3,377,000 kWh of electricity annually for the facility, the equivalent of reducing 2,513 tons of carbon dioxide, or the emissions generated by 538 cars or electricity provided to 377 homes yearly.

This project will create more than 200 full-time, permanent co-worker positions in Joliet once the facility is fully operational. It created 238,000 hours of work for the construction team, in addition to generating property tax revenue for local governments and schools.