Target Corp. said it plans to open three new sortation centers in the next year — two in the Chicago area and on in the Denver metro area. The sortation centers, pioneered in 2020 in Target's home city of Minneapolis, expand the retailer's regional delivery center model and streamlines the process of fulfilling digital orders.
So far, the company has opened a total of six locations nationwide, including sites in Houston, Dallas, the Philadelphia area and Lawrenceville, Ga., reports Chain Store Age. The sortation centers take orders that have been boxed in local stores and sort them quickly and efficiently for local deliveries.
“Rather than team members managing sorting packages in a store’s backroom, sortation centers take on the sorting process, saving our store teams time and space so they can fulfill more orders and reach guests faster at a lower delivery cost for us,” Target said. “Plus, sortation centers allow our teams to easily scale to fulfill a growing number of orders, and consolidating orders and batching deliveries add ease for our carriers.”
In Minneapolis, Target’s sortation center handles nearly two-thirds of the retailer’s digital orders in the area, reports CSA. It can now can deliver tens of thousands of packages on its busiest days with the help of more than 2,000 Shipt drivers, who deliver packages in their personal vehicles. Packages are picked up from Target’s stores in the Twin Cities area twice daily and sorted at the center for pickup by Shipt drivers and the chain’s other carrier partners for delivery to customers.
The company said it is going one step further, working with Shipt to pilot the use of large-capacity delivery vehicles in Minneapolis. The vehicles can hold up to eight times more packages per route, according to Target, adding more flexibility to deliver even faster and make room for growing order sizes, reports CSA.
“We’re not stopping at nine sortation centers,” Target stated. “We’ll continue to invest in our network with additional facilities in new markets in the coming years as we remain focused on building a modern, flexible supply chain that supports our stores, all in service of our guests.
Target’s investment in its delivery network comes as the company’s digital sales have grown nearly $13 billion from 2019 to 2021. Stores fulfilling more than 95% of Target’s total sales in 2021.