DC Velocity - March 2010

ships about 5 million cases a year to distributors throughout the country and around the world, has also taken steps to reduce the carbon footprint of its distribution operations.

So it followed naturally that when the company decided to build a new DC, it made sustainability a priority.

Jackson Family Wines, along with its developer and general contractor, went into the project with the intention of building a DC that would qualify for a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. The LEED program, which is administered by the U.S.

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Green Building Council (USGBC), requires a facility to meet specific standards in five key areas: sustainable site development, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality.

“From the beginning, being very conscious of our impact on the environment was critical,” says Kathryn Zepaltas, director of logistics for Jackson Family Wines.

A need to consolidate

The decision to build a new DC grew out
of the company’s desire to consolidate
what had become a tangled network of
distribution operations. “At one point, in
addition to the main DC [a 150,000-
square-foot facility at the company’s
Santa Rosa winery], we had 11 other
places where wine was stored,” recalls
Zepaltas. “What was happening was that
75 percent of our production was moving
to another site before moving back to the
main DC. That meant lots of extra han-
dling and transportation.”
That extra handling was not only ineffi-
cient, it also affected the integrity of the
packaging, Zepaltas reports. In addition,
the scattered operations made it difficult
to manage inventory and ensure out-
bound goods were on hand when needed.
Management agreed that distribution had
to be consolidated into a single large DC.

The original plan was to find an existing building close to the company’s Santa Rosa production facility. But when it couldn’t find a suitable property, the winemaker decided to build instead. After canvassing the area, the company’s site search team settled on a vacant site in American Canyon, Calif.

The 30-acre site offered a number of advantages from a sustainability perspective. To begin with, it was close enough to the Santa Rosa plant to ensure the company could continue its fleet backhaul program. After delivering wine to the DC from the Santa Rosa plant, the company’s dry vans would be able to pick up bottles from a supplier just a few miles away for the return trip—an arrangement that would hold down transportation costs as well as carbon emissions.