Cardinal Health to Open Ontario Distribution Center

• By Laurie Watanabe
• May 11, 2023

Cardinal Health Canada is opening a distribution center in the greater Toronto area, thus expanding its distribution reach to nine locations.

In a May 10 announcement, Cardinal Health said the new distribution facility will help “to better meet the medical and surgical product demands of the Canadian healthcare system.”

The new facility is 163,000 square feet and “will integrate state-of-the-art robotic technologies to deliver operational efficiencies as well as enhanced employee, customer and supplier experiences. Working with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) means that each employee stays within a specific zone in the facility and becomes an expert on the products located in that area, reducing physical labor while improving productivity. For customers, the AMR implementation will increase picking and packing accuracy.”

Russell Schuster, President of Cardinal Health Canada, said in the announcement, “Beyond growing our already significant distribution footprint across Canada, this distribution center supports Cardinal Health's market-leading just-in-time Stockless solution, which takes on the complexities of procurement, supply chain, warehousing and transportation within hospitals, so they can focus on what hospitals do best: patient care.”

The distribution center — the third new one announced for North America since April — is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2023 or early 2024. The new facility boosts Cardinal Health’s distribution space in Ontario to 541,000 square feet, and 1.12 million square feet in Canada.