The Giant Tiger Distribution Centre in Johnstown is now fully operational with workers and robots.
The centre has 300 full time employees and are still hiring. They have hired 30 people in the past three weeks and another ten begin Monday. They also have a Symbotic system they say will help grow the company. The system is the first one in Canada and it has over 200 robots that can move up to 40 kilometres an hour. The system can pick out and deposit packages that need to be put on shelves or transported out of the warehouse. John Hubbard is the Assistant Vice President of Warehousing at the centre and says when people hear about it there first thought is they may lose their job but at this facility that is not the case. He says the system is there to support the growth of the company.
“The labour pool is really small. A lot of people don’t want to do that heavy lifting every day. So, in order to support our growth going forward and our success, we needed to ensure that we were going to be able to pick the boxes with a reducing labour pool.”
The distribution centre covers around 600,000 square feet. Hubbard says when building the facility they left room to expand in the next five and ten years.
“If we continue on the trend we do, which is the plan, which is a variety of different grocery and soft goods like socks, it will probably make more sense to expand the case shuttle system.”
Hubbard says they’re looking forward to bringing on more people at the distribution centre.