After a phenomenal amount of work by our teams in both New Zealand and Australia, our Auckland (Wiri) Distribution Centre (DC) has gone live with the first deliveries arriving in store.

In an historic moment for the business, the DC – located in the south of Auckland – has hit the ground running delivering approximately 50,000 units on day one, with volume to increase as more vendors are onboarded over the months ahead. The 23,000 square metre facility will have the capability to deliver up to 500,000 units per day across all parts of New Zealand.

With the site currently employing a team of 50, the workforce is expected to more than double by the middle of next year. Our inaugural workforce has come together really well, managing a rapid stock build and will ensure that our stores receive significantly improved service levels from today and over the year ahead whilst the automation is constructed to make this a truly world-class facility. Commissioning of the Dematic automation system in H2 next year will bring even more opportunities for our team to learn and grow in what will be the largest healthcare distribution centre in the country.

“At go-live, the site will be supporting 78 customers across the country’s north and south islands, with additional stores coming online before Christmas,” said Jason Allen, General Manager Supply Chain – NZ. “We’ll be servicing stores twice weekly with faster turnaround times, and that frequency will increase as our volume does.

“It’s been a remarkable effort from our people, business partners and the project team to have the site ready to go at scale on day one and it gives us a great platform for our existing stores coming into Christmas and new locations to come online.”

Well done to all of the teams that have come together to bring us to this point.

The real excitement starts now…