Dive Brief:
- Burlington Stores announced it broke ground on a new distribution center in Buckeye, Arizona, located near Phoenix. The facility is expected to open in 2028, according to an April 8 press release.
- The off-price retailer said the 2 million-square-foot facility is its most advanced to date, with engineering to keep up with the speed of off-price retail.
- Burlington said the new facility will be “highly automated” with advanced sorting systems and custom software, leading to faster daily operations, per the press release.
Dive Insight:
Burlington continues to add new distribution centers as it works to shift the majority of its supply and processing to more efficient facilities, per a Q4 earnings call on March 5.
The off-price retailer announced last year it had agreed to purchase two of its leased distribution centers: one in Savannah, Georgia, and another in Riverside, California. The Savannah facility is expected to open this spring, EVP and CFO Kristin Wolfe said on the earnings call.
“It's more than twice the size of our current largest DC,” Wolfe told analysts. “It's highly automated.”
The company has three other distribution centers in New Jersey, three more in California, and a lease with an option to own a 2.1 million-square-foot facility in Ellabell, Georgia, according to a securities filing.
As part of its long-term strategy, Burlington expects to reduce supply chain expenses “through numerous productivity initiatives in our DCs and cost savings projects across supply chain,” Wolfe said.
The off-price retailer already saw some momentum in its cost savings goal. In 2025, the company reported some savings in its supply costs.
Burlington estimates that it “will spend approximately $290 million to support our supply chain initiatives, largely related to completing the build-out of the distribution center in Georgia and beginning construction on a distribution center in Arizona,” per the securities filing.
But the start-up costs will then be “offset by our continued efforts around productivity and cost savings initiatives elsewhere in the supply chain,” Wolfe said.
