Dive Brief:
- Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits opened a distribution facility in West Columbia, South Carolina, according to a Feb. 10 press release.
- The 412,500-square-foot facility in Lexington County aims to strengthen the distributor’s supply chain network and support suppliers in the state, per the release.
- The distribution center is equipped with advanced material handling systems and scalable storage capacity, according to the release.
Dive Insight:
The West Columbia facility, which sits on an 85-acre campus and has an expansion capacity of more than 300,000 additional square feet, aims to optimize workflow, accuracy and order fulfillment, per the press release.
The distribution center has several features, including 13 receiving dock positions and 22 shipping dock positions, alongside parking for 279 vehicles and capacity for 108 trailers.
Southern Glazer’s South Carolina distribution center: By the numbers
13
Number of receiving dock positions
22
Number of shipping dock positions
279
Number of vehicles that can park at the facility
108
Number of trailers for available capacity
2
Number of multi-level pick modules
4
Number of dual-purpose palletizers
The facility also has a storage capacity of 1.39 million cases, alongside dedicated bottle and cold rooms for various products, according to the release. The West Columbia distribution center is also equipped with two multi-level pick modules with a combined capacity of 75,000 cases, as well as four dual-purpose palletizers that can each process up to 800 cases per hour.
Other features include eight pick lines, two bottle lines, one dedicated oddball line and six downlines, a Southern Glazer’s spokesperson told Supply Chain Dive in an email. They further noted that the facility also operates on DIT8 software from supply chain automation solutions company Dematic.
Southern Glazer’s has made efforts to optimize its supply chain, including welcoming Drew Vermilion in 2024 as its SVP of supply chain strategy and chief of staff.
As part of the beverage distributor’s supply chain strategy, Southern Glazer’s deployed Symbotic’s artificial intelligence-driven automation system, which aimed to improve fill rates and order accuracy and increase capacity.
In 2024, Southern Glazer’s decided to relocate its warehouse operations in St. Louis, Missouri, to a facility near Kansas City in the state. The move was part of a larger plan to expand its operations by investing in new facilities and routing and forecasting technologies, Chief Supply Chain Officer Bobby Burg said at the time. The strategy included new distribution centers in several states, including South Carolina.
