H-E-B starts construction of Super Regional Grocery Warehouse

H-E-B has broken ground on a massive new warehouse in San Antonio, Texas, that the company said will be its largest-ever manufacturing and supply-chain division investment.

Called the San Antonio Super Regional Grocery Warehouse, the planned 1.6-million-square-foot facility is part of a multi-phase project to develop 871 acres on the city’s East Side. Construction is expected to be completed in late 2019, with the warehouse going into operation in 2020.

The groundbreaking of the superregional warehouse

H-E-B said the Super Regional facility will be its biggest single-build warehouse and hold more than 17,000 grocery items. It will initially have 200 loading docks, enabling about 180 trailer trucks to make outbound deliveries daily.

In addition, the warehouse will feature solar power solutions and a centralized HVAC system and, once up and running, will be H-E-B’s most energy-efficient facility in its industrial network, the Texas grocer said.

“As San Antonio grows, we’ve been honored to grow with it, expanding our footprint of stores and digital retail offerings to serve more Texans,” Carson Landsgard, senior vice president of supply chain and logistics at H-E-B, said in a statement. “More than anything, the construction of our newest warehouse facility supports H-E-B’s future and ongoing commitment to be the best in-store and digital retailer in Texas.”

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H-E-B noted that the new warehouse site, situated along Interstate 10 and Foster Road, will provide room to grow plus extra space for dry goods and other grocery products. The development, too, will bring supply volume relief to facilities in San Antonio and San Marcos, the company added.

The San Antonio Super Regional Grocery Warehouse will take over from the distribution center along Rittiman Road in San Antonio, which has served the city and surrounding areas for more than 50 years, according to H-E-B. When built in the 1960s, the warehouse measured about 120,000 square feet and housed approximately 3,800 grocery items.

H-E-B said that, for the long term, it aims to develop a master-planned campus at the location, including such operations as manufacturing, warehousing and transportation. Thus far, no plans are in place for other development on the property besides the warehouse project. The company purchased the undeveloped land, located is directly across from China Grove, Texas, in September 2017.

At the start, the new warehouse will have about 600 to 700 workers, H-E-B reported. Of those, roughly half will be new jobs, and the rest of the positions will come from H-E-B’s existing warehouses, the company said.

San Antonio-based H-E-B, which generates annual sales of $25 billion, operates 400 stores overall, including around 340 stores in Texas and nearly 60 stores in Mexico.