Salt Lake City Lands a Walmart Fulfillment Center

You get a fulfillment center, and you get a fulfillment center: A week after announcing plans for Tennessee's first Walmart fulfillment center, Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart on Dec. 15 said it will open a 1-million-square-foot fulfillment facility in Utah next year.

The center, to be located at 990 N. 6550 W. in Salt Lake City, is expected to open in summer 2022 and will fulfill orders placed on Walmart.com, the retailer said in a news release. Approximately 450 permanent, full-time jobs will be created with the facility's opening, according to Walmart.

"Walmart is excited to welcome our first fulfillment center in Salt Lake City to support our growing e-commerce fulfillment network," Walmart U.S. SVP of Supply Chain Steve Miller said in a release.

That growing fulfillment network will see significant expansion in the next two years: Besides the new centers in Utah and Tennessee (the latter slated to open in fall 2022), Walmart also recently announced plans to open a 1.5-million-square-foot automated fulfillment facility in the Dallas suburb of Lancaster, Texas, in 2023. The high-tech fulfillment centers are in addition to two new Walmart grocery distribution centers—one in Lancaster and one in South Carolina's Spartanburg County—that will serve Walmart stores and are expected to open in 2024.

Walmart, which last month post comp sales growth of 9.2% in the company's third quarter of fiscal 2022, has seen e-commerce sales on Walmart.com and through the Walmart app continue to climb. U.S. e-commerce sales were up 8% year over year in the third quarter and up 87% on a two-year stack. 

"Speed is a really important element inside the company right now," outgoing Walmart CFO Brett Biggs said at a Morgan Stanley virtual retail conference in December. "Our customers are moving quickly; our competitors are moving quickly; we want to stay ahead of that."