FedEx to Open Distribution Center in New Mexico
FedEx Ground is moving dirt around on a 215,000-square-foot distribution center at Santa Teresa New Mexico’s newest industrial development, Westpark. The $20 million center is expected to be operating in the first quarter of next year, according to sources familiar with the project.
“The new facility is part of a nationwide network expansion to boost daily package volume capacity and further enhance the speed and service capabilities of the FedEx Ground network,” the company said in a statement to the Journal.
FedEx Ground declined to say how many workers would be employed at the center, but people familiar with the project previously have put the number between 140 and 240 employees, some of whom may be transferred from a smaller distribution center in Las Cruces. No layoffs are expected.
Parent company FedEx Corp. ranks No. 2 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada.
The Santa Teresa facility will give FedEx easy access to the Mexican market. The company told the Journal the new facility “will serve FedEx customers with maquiladora operations” — companies with assembly factories in Ciudad Juárez and northern Mexico.
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“Santa Teresa was in competition for the FedEx ground transportation facility with another state” — Texas, reportedly — “and we look forward to the many jobs it will create in southern New Mexico,” Economic Development Secretary Jon Barela said in a statement.
Gov. Susana Martinez is scheduled to be in Santa Teresa on May 19 to inaugurate Westpark’s first tenant, MCS, the nation’s largest picture-frame manufacturer.
The Santa Teresa distribution center likely will be outfitted with the automated sorting technology FedEx Ground uses to handle nearly 5 million packages daily across its network. At its other distribution centers, overhead lasers and six-sided cameras scan bar codes, and conveyor belts electronically guide packages to their appropriate destination chute, where they are loaded for transport to destination terminals for local delivery.
FedEx Ground is one of the faster-growing segments of FedEx Corp.
The ground operation has been investing heavily in network expansion, as package volumes continue to grow thanks to increased e-commerce and customers’ preference in a slow economy for lower-cost ground service versus express air service.
The parent company said in its 2015 report that it expects to spend $4.6 billion in 2016 on the continued expansion of its ground network and the modernization of its fleet of aircraft at FedEx Express.
To that end, FedEx Ground is putting up new facilities around the country, including a 500,000-square-foot distribution center in Middletown, Connecticut; a 344,000 square-foot automated distribution facility in Reno, Nevada; and a 300,000-square-foot distribution center in Louisville, Kentucky, according to local news reports. Construction on a 1.2 million-square-foot “megahub” in Allen Township, Pennsylvania., is scheduled to begin in June.
