DHL eCommerce moves into a new Missouri-based facility

Earlier this week, DHL eCommerce Solutions, a subsidiary of global logistics services provider, Deutsche Post DHL Group, said it has opened up a new 124,700 square-foot Kansas City-based distribution center.  

The company said it invested roughly $18 million into this new facility, which will be comprised of more than 125 full-time employees. And it added that a key driver for this facility is to meet growing demand in the Kansas City region and process more domestic volume and ship throughout the U.S.

The new facility’s address is 11500 North Congress, Kansas City, MO, which is five miles from the Kansas City International Airport, as well as the I-435 Loop and I-29. DHL said the new facility is temperature-controlled and insulated, meshing warehouse, conference, training, and office spaces. It also said this facility was built with environmentally-friendly features, including two EV charging stations, LED lighting, HE HVAC, roller shade windows, and clerestory windows with glazing.

“The Kansas City metropolitan area is rapidly expanding, and it’s the perfect location for DHL eCommerce Solutions to have a larger, fully customized facility that will assist us in growing our footprint in the Midwest,” said Lee Spratt, CEO of DHL eCommerce Solutions, Americas, in a statement.

Scott Ashbaugh, VP of Operations for DHL eCommerce Solutions, Americas, told LM that routing and optimization were the main drivers for this relocation.  

“In Kansas City, we were able to construct a built-to-suit distribution center double in size compared to our previous location in St. Louis, which allows us to process more volume, getting it more efficiently to the final mile, and that includes more automation,” said Asblaugh. “In this new building, we can process more of our customers' volume and serve more customers based in the surrounding area…[with an] overall net improvement in speed, reliability, and cost.”

The main services provided by DHL eCommerce out of this facility is to provide sorting and shipping of lightweight domestic parcels and packages that are five pounds or less.

What’s more, DHL said that this new facility more than doubles the size of the company’s previous Missouri-based facility, at 11401 Moog Dr., St. Louis. The company also noted that this new facility can process more than double the number of parcels and packages than the previous location could handle, with two NPI Gen3 Xstream Dual Lane Sliding Shoe Sorters that process 28,000 parcels per hour to different bin destinations such as tubs, carts, and gaylords

This new facility serves as the most recent example of DHL eCommerce’s United States expansion plans. In February, it relocated its Stow, Ohio operations to a new wholly-owned building, and it also moved its Salt Lake City distribution center to a larger facility near its previous location.