Foster’s Food Fair IGA has a pair of significant projects in the works, including the construction of a massive centralised distribution centre near Owen Roberts International Airport, and a new store in Camana Bay focused on organic and gourmet items.
Ground-breaking on the distribution centre is projected for mid-October, pending permit approvals, while the Camana Bay store is tentatively set to open in mid- to late January, said Foster’s Managing Director Woody Foster.
Airport distribution centre
Construction on the 75,000-square-foot distribution centre is expected to take about 12 months from the start date, Mr. Foster said, adding that the construction schedule may be speeded up to compensate for delays in beginning the project. Located on seven acres opposite the airport’s long-term parking lot and designed to withstand Category 5 hurricane winds, the structure will be about 450 feet long, 240 feet wide and 50 feet tall.
“It is going to be a very big building,” Mr. Foster said.
The distribution centre will have space for dry storage and refrigerated storage and will also include 10,000 square feet of office space for Foster’s central administrative offices. Currently, Foster’s dry storage is in a roughly 22,000-square-foot warehouse in Industrial Park, while the company’s refrigerated storage is in about 10,000 square feet in the back of Foster’s Airport Centre store. Foster’s central administrative offices are on the second floor of the Airport store.
Not only will the new distribution centre have more than double the existing raw square footage for dry and refrigerated storage, but the ceiling height will also be more than double that in the current storage spaces. The office portion of the distribution centre will be two stories. Additionally, Mr. Foster pointed to efficiencies achieved through the centralisation of warehousing and administration.
“We’re really looking at it to assist with how we handle our products and help take our quality control to another level,” he said.
As for the existing warehouses, the company has not yet determined what to do with its dry storage location, which it owns. “That will be a business opportunity when we move out,” he said.
The company does have plans for its current refrigerated storage area but is not ready yet to make those plans public, he said.
The new space is projected to meet the company’s needs well into the future, Mr. Foster said, estimating about 20 years.
“The new distribution centre should take care of us for quite some time,” he said.
Years in the making
The company has been considering building a centralised distribution centre since before Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Mr. Foster said. After the devastating hurricane, the company focused on recovering and then expanding its business.
“We put the distribution centre on hold as we continued to grow our stores,” he said.
From 2005-2008, Foster’s opened a Priced Right at the Airport Centre, Morritt’s Shopping Centre (Express) store in East End, Countryside Shopping Village store in Savannah and Priced Right in Republix Plaza in West Bay. Foster’s also quadrupled the size of its Republix Plaza store to 28,000 square feet.
“We’ve been somewhat busy since Ivan. Now that all the stores are in place, the distribution centre has to be done,” Mr. Foster said.
The global economic crisis temporarily put distribution centre plans on hold. “We were not going to embark on a multimillion-dollar project to then have the bottom of the market fall out,” he said.
Mr. Foster noted that the Priced Right stores hold their own inventories.
No change in distribution market
Mr. Foster stressed that the construction of the distribution centre will not impact Progressive Distributors, which is a joint venture between Foster’s and Kirkconnells, formed in 2003.
“We have no plans to get into the distribution business outside of what we already do with Progressive. The new distribution centre is strictly for our own internal needs,” Mr. Foster said.
Progressive is not an exclusive distributor to Foster’s or Kirk stores, he said. Rather, Progressive is an “arm’s length” entity that “is just another vendor to us,” he said.
Foster’s buys items directly from overseas and also from local vendors, including Progressive. More than 50 per cent of Foster’s inventory is purchased from overseas, and that is what the new distribution centre will accommodate.
Foster’s in Camana Bay
While the new distribution centre will have a sizeable footprint, the forthcoming organic/gourmet Foster’s in Camana Bay will occupy a modest 4,000-square-foot space. The building that will house Foster’s is across the street from Digicel but not yet occupied.
In comparison, the Morritt’s Express store is 3,500 square feet, and the Countryside store is 21,600 square feet.
Mr. Foster said the Camana Bay venture represents relatively uncharted waters for the company, which has not even settled on a name for the new store that will stock as much organic and gourmet inventory as possible. Although Foster’s stores do stock those kinds of items, the organic/gourmet focus is outside the company’s current field of expertise, he said.
“We’re looking forward to adding this component to our business. Right now I don’t feel like we do as good of a job as we could in that area,” he said.
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