MOBILE, AL - As we close the first month of 2018, Walmart has announced some exciting news about its new 2.5 million-square-feet distribution center outside Mobile, Alabama—this amounts to .7 miles from one end of the facility to the other. The retailer expects to begin housing shipments in early June, while putting wares on outbound trucks just two months later.

"We should be completing the building in the month of May," said General Manager of the Mobile Import Distribution Center, Barry Westbrooks, according to a recent AL.com article. "Our plans right now—we'll start receiving some of our merchandise, we'll start that process the first of June. And then we plan to start shipping to other locations by the end of July, first of August. We have to build up inventory in the distribution center before we start the shipping process.”

This news trails its recent announcement that there will be three days of hiring sessions looking for hundreds of workers to dive right into the company’s new distribution center. While Westbrooks clarified that these are not job fairs, they are, however, an opportunity for the company to become acquainted with applicants as they gather information about the opening jobs, the corporate culture Walmart offers, pay and benefits, and the hiring process as a whole. With about 600 people expected to be hired by the end of June, the first step Walmart’s hiring process is to on-board 50 positions by the end of March.

"The next step after then will be to solidify some dates and locations where we have actual job fairs," explained Westbrooks. "And those will be coming up...could be late February, early March."

This monolithic project is the first opened Walmart under Westbrooks’s wing, but he has been with the company for 18 years. And while he has much experience to bring to the table, he expects most of the new employees will not have worked in such a colossal facility, but it’s more about the long-run in this case, he explained.

“We’re in a position where we can train folks to do the jobs we need them to do, for the most part,” said Westbrooks. “We’re looking for folks that, hopefully, they’re looking for a career. We think that’s something we can offer people.”

The first phase of the building’s construction is well on its way to being completed, with racks going up. On these shelves will sit goods to be stored for future shipments out to other, smaller distribution centers. Most of the goods shipped will come in shipping containers trekking west on I-10 to reach the distribution center via the Port of Mobile. The company expects about 150 to 200 containers a week in the first few months; however, Westbrooks goes on to explain that he foresees a thousand containers per week could be making their way into the distribution center by the time it is fully operational.

How will the opening of the distribution center assist in Walmart’s continued foray into the grocery business, and how will this impact fresh produce sales? Look to AndNowUKnow for more inside scoops on this story and more!

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