The Home Depot is among several businesses seeing a recent uptick in e-commerce. The home improvement retailer will be adding three new facilities in the Metro Atlanta area over the next 18 months.
Savannah poised to handle e-commerce boom
The Home Depot recently announced plans to build three new warehousing facilities in the Metro Atlanta area, creating approximately 1,000 new jobs.
The Atlanta-based home improvement retailer plans to open centers in DeKalb, Fulton, and Henry counties over the next 18 months. In addition to Atlanta serving as the retail giant’s headquarters, Georgia boasts 90 Home Depot stores, nine distribution centers, 25,000 employees and a network of technology and call centers.
In 2017, The Home Depot announced a plan to invest $1.2 billion in its supply chain to expand its distribution network with approximately 150 new facilities nationally. This investment will expand the company’s current same-day and next-day delivery options to 90 percent of the U.S. population. Georgia is a hub for the company’s Southeast supply chain operations and its national delivery strategy.
“We’re investing over $11 billion over the next several years in our stores, supply chain, technology and our associates to meet customers’ changing expectations and to create a frictionless, interconnected retail experience,” said Mark Holifield, Home Depot’s executive vice president of supply chain and product development.
The Home Depot is also among several businesses seeing an increase in e-commerce as more customers shop online amid the COVID-19 crisis. Dr. Walter Kemmsies, a managing director at industrial real estate consultancy Jones, Lang, and LaSalle (JLL), noted that Savannah is poised to take advantage of the e-commerce boom because the port offers speed, reliability, capacity and flexibility.
“The flexibility speaks to being able to accommodate e-commerce containers that may need a longer dwell time,” Kemmsies said. “Those containers are often kept near their point of origin, be it a domestic factory or at a port until the cargo owner knows which locations in the U.S. will sales of those goods occur.”
Kemmsies added the Port of Savannah’s storage capacity and central location reduces the risk of having to move goods more than once. The port’s status as the third-largest container gateway and top exporter in the nation positions it to be a vital link in the supply chain for e-commerce retailers.
