Walmart is making a major investment in Quebec with two new facilities, including a new Montreal Walmart Supercentre.
“Montreal is an extremely important market for us and we're incredibly excited to be growing in Quebec and offering even more shopping options for our customers," Walmart Canada Regional Vice President for Quebec Cyrille Ballereau said in a March press release.
Here's what you need to know about Walmart's planned Montreal store and Montreal-area fulfillment centre.
Where will the new Montreal Walmart Supercentre be located and when will it open?
Rendering of the new Walmart Supercentre in Montreal's Marché Central.Walmart CanadaScheduled to open in the summer of 2023, the new supercentre will anchor the Marché Central expansion in Ahuntsic-Cartierville. Walmart will occupy 140,000 square feet of the shopping centre's so-called "Phase 6" buildout in a lot adjacent to the current campus on boulevard de l'Acadie.
The Marché Central expansion will also include a Décathlon.
What features will the new Montreal Walmart Supercentre have?
Most of the "state-of-the-art" features touted by execs in the March release focus on sustainable construction and operation — if we consider any mega-retailer "sustainable."
They include a 125,000-square-foot green roof, LED lighting, recycled building materials and "ultra-low flow" toilets.
The Marché Central developer, the QuadReal Property Group, also plans to install "rain gardens" (which use natural elements to reduce runoff) in the parking lot and to broadly plant more greenery to mitigate the heat island effect.
QuadReal has also vowed to make the site accessible to cyclists and pedestrians with clearly-marked paths and to include electric charging stations.
Inside, customers will find a "unique store design," Ballereau promised vaguely. If that design aligns with Walmart Canada's national store upgrade objectives, that could mean dedicated space for online order pickups.
What's the benefit of the new Montreal-area Walmart Fulfillment Centre?
Rendering of the planned Walmart Fulfillment Centre in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec.
CNW Group/Walmart Canada Corp.
Also in the works is a new "high-tech sortable fulfillment centre," which Walmart has called a "cornerstone" of a $1 billion investment in its infrastructure across Canada.
The facility will become a "delivery hub" for Quebec and Atlantic Canada, which should mean "better product availability and quicker service" both in-store and online for local customers.
Walmart says it will deploy "cutting-edge logistics technology to achieve productivity with less physical effort." That might sound like more robots and fewer people, but the company still plans to hire about 225 people to staff the centre. It's accepting applications online.
When will the fulfillment centre open?
The 457,000-square-foot facility is set to open in Vaudreuil-Dorion, just west of Montreal Island, in 2024.
It will have enough capacity to store 500,000 items at any given time and ship up to 20 million items every year.
Ballereau called the fulfillment centre "the latest example of Walmart's commitment to Quebec."
"We are investing for growth in Quebec and creating jobs for Quebecers to better serve our customers. Quebecers will see refreshed stores, faster service and more options available in-store and online."
