Calphalon Corporation, based in Perrysburg, is opening a new distribution center located on State Route 25 in Middleton Township of Wood County. Located just north of Bowling Green, it is 12.8 miles from the company’s only manufacturing facility in Perrysburg Township.
Calphalon will begin operating out of the 363,000-square-foot facility on a 50-acre site on June 3, according to Zac Graffice, distribution manager for the company. It will house 120 employees from the two distribution centers in Toledo that it replaces.
“It will improve efficiency and services as we ship products to customers across the country and around the world,” said Cory Niekamp, engineering manager at Calphalon who served as project manager for the new center.Calphalon expects a net increase of 33 jobs during a five-year period and has additional space on the site to double the size of the facility for future expansion, Graffice said.
Graffice and Niekamp helped plan, design and manage the construction of the distribution center. InSite was the developer and Feldman Design-Build was the builder of the project. Work on the site began Aug. 12.
Important factor
Niekamp said they worked closely with officials from Middleton Township and Wood County to keep the project in Northwest Ohio. Being located close to I-75 and the Ohio Turnpike was an important factor in its location.
More than 1,200 of Calphalon cookware and accessory products will be stored in and distributed worldwide from the facility. The company sells its wares through mass merchandise retailers, said Niekamp.
The products are stored at 34,000 pallet locations and moved throughout the facility by a conveyor system and 18 forklifts. The 1,200 SKUs are identified by a computerized bar code system, Graffice said.
The facility includes 55 truck docks with 25 for inbound deliveries on one side of the building and 30 for outbound shipments on the other side.
Efficiency may be important but “safety is one of our main focuses at Calphalon,” said Graffice, who has worked in distribution at the company for 10 years. The only acceptable level for safety in the facility is zero accidents and no near misses, he said.
Rubbermaid subsidiary
Calphalon operates as a subsidiary of Newell Rubbermaid, Inc. It was originally Commercial Metal and became Commercial Aluminum Cookware Company in 1963, introduced the Calphalon brand of cookware in 1968, and renamed the company Calphalon Corp. in 1997. Newell purchased Calphalon in 1998, Rubbermaid in 1999 and became Newell Rubbermaid Inc.
Newell Rubbermaid, an S&P 500 company, is a global marketer of consumer and commercial products with 2012 sales of approximately $5.9 billion in more than 100 countries worldwide.
Home Depot next?
Northwest Ohio is home to numerous large distribution centers for retailers, manufacturers and shippers, primarily due to its geographic location and access to multiple transportation modes.
While Calphalon boasts the newest distribution center in the region, a national retailer is considering Northwest Ohio as a location for another distribution facility.
Home Depot is considering a site in Troy Township of Wood County for a new distribution center. The project is still in the early planning stages, according to Wade Gottschalk, executive director of the Wood County Economic Development Commission.
The Troy Township Planning Commission approved development and site plans for the proposed Home Depot distribution center May 9. The 1.6-million-square-foot facility would be located on 157 acres off Pemberville Road near U.S. 20, said township zoning inspector Todd Gottschalk.
“It’s not a done deal and still in the early stages. It is one of the sites we’re considering for that project but there has been no sign-off on it yet,” said Stephen Holmes, a spokesman for Home Depot.
Home Depot operates a rapid deployment center in Van Buren north of Findlay that employs about 350 associates. The new facility would not impact the existing one in Van Buren, according to Holmes.
The existing 650,000-square-foot facility opened in 2010 serves stores in northern Ohio, Pittsburgh and Buffalo, N.Y., areas, handling 140 trailers inbound and from 90-100 outbound daily, according to Lance Hunt, general manager of that facility.
Package delivery
The two largest package delivery companies, FedEx and UPS, operate distribution facilities in the Toledo area.
FedEx Freight Inc. opened a ground freight regional distribution center in 2009 that serves routes in Ohio and Michigan. The 600,000 square-foot facility is located on a 130-acre site in Perrysburg Township.
FedEx is building another freight service center on Arbor Drive in Northwood, approximately two miles from the distribution center. The 142,000-square-foot building currently under construction will include a processing area for sorting and delivery of freight, offices, dispatch center, maintenance and fuel storage facilities.
UPS operates the Toledo Hub facility in Maumee, which is a link in its Hub and Spoke System that routes shipments from local operating centers to centralized hubs for sorting. From there, shipments are transported to another local center or to a hub near the final destination and then to a local center for delivery.
As with most UPS hubs, Toledo’s includes an operating center. The local hub handles about 430,000 packages daily with 1,500 employees, 108 brown delivery trucks and 140 tractor trailers operating from it, according to a company spokesperson.
Walgreens operates a 680,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution center located on Oregon Road at State Route 795 in Perrysburg. The facility opened in 2003 and employs more than 500 people, according to company officials.
The Perrysburg distribution center carries 24,000 typical products sold in Walgreens stores in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and parts of Illinois, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
Menards operates a 1.3-million- square-foot distribution center in Holiday City, located just off the Ohio Turnpike in Williams County. The facility serves Menards stores in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana as one of four distribution centers for the company based in Eau Claire, Wis..
