Shell Lubricants opened a 455,000 square-foot regional distribution center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the help of third-party logistics provider Kenco Logistics, the companies announced Friday. The facility is the largest of Shells 11 distribution centers in the United States and will distribute products from its blending plant in West Virginia.
The Pennsylvania facility had a soft opening in December, but officially opened March 1.
Kenco configured the space and implemented equipment aimed at maximizing the facility’s efficiency, in addition to supplying Shell with tools for labor management, reporting and integration, according to the press release. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The new distribution center will provide staging for products made at the company’s Congo, West Virginia, blending plant, which is less than 30 miles away, Carlos Maurer, president of Shell Lubricants Americas, told Lube Report. He declined to disclose the capacity of the plant.
Most products passing through the Pittsburgh facility will go to retail stores, original equipment manufacturers and Shell distributors, but in some cases the products may go directly to end-users, noted Maurer.
This new regional distribution center will help reduce driver risk for the local community due to a projected 11 percent increase in existing customers within a 1-day delivery range of the center, he said.
“With the opening of the new center by Kenco, we expect to remove more than 1 million road miles due to this customer-centricity, and estimate a nearly 1,500 metric ton reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from on-road transport because of the decrease in transport logistics associated with this new center,” he continued.
Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Kenco is an integrated logistics solutions provider. Its offerings include distribution and fulfillment, comprehensive transportation management, material handling services, real estate management and information technology.