TORONTO, Ontario: Maple Leaf Foods Inc is building a new distribution centre in southwestern Ontario.
The facility is being designed to handle ambient, refrigerated and frozen products. Once completed, the DC will be operated by 3PL DB Schenker. An unnamed third-party investor will actually own the building and lease it to Maple Leaf.
It will be built in Wellington County’s Puslinch Township, southeast of Guelph and east of Cambridge—approximately 80km west of Toronto—and will act as the company’s prepared meats distribution hub for central and eastern Canada. The DC is in geographic proximity to other Maple Leaf prepared meat facilities, including a 37,350sqm (402,000sqf) facility currently being constructed in Hamilton.
Maple Leaf is set to begin the process to gain regulatory approvals, and construction of the building will begin shortly. The company’s schedule calls for the facility to be commissioned in the first half of 2013. By 2014 the company is expecting to have closed one existing DC in Moncton, New Brunswick and two in Ontario (in Burlington and Kitchener) and to have transferred those operations to 80-employee Puslinch facility.
“This new facility will simplify our distribution network and significantly increase our supply chain efficiencies,” said Maple Leaf Foods president and CEO, Michael McCain.
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