Walmart breaks ground on a $1.3B Georgia fulfillment center

The News

Walmart broke ground on Nov 2 on a $1.3 billion automated fulfillment center in Carnesville, Georgia, that it expects to employ 1,000 full-time workers. The 1.5 million-square-foot building is the sixth of Walmart’s next-generation fulfillment centers.

The center is at the Franklin 85 Logistics Center off I-85, about 80 miles northeast of Atlanta near the South Carolina line.
Governor Brian Kemp said the jobs will let Georgians “work close to home rather than commuting to a larger city for work.”

The details

Carnesville joins five next-gen centers that Walmart already runs in Illinois, Indiana, Texas, Pennsylvania and California. Walmart announced the first four in 2022. All four were open by May 2024. The fifth, in Stockton, California, opened last month.

Each center uses an automated storage system that brings products to workers, which Walmart says cuts the fulfillment process from 12 steps to five.
At 1.5 million square feet, Carnesville is the same size as the Lancaster, Texas, and Greencastle centers. Stockton has more than 900,000 square feet.

The 1,000 jobs also go to a small county, with 852 residents in Carnesville and about 26,000 in Franklin County. Walmart qualifies for worker training through Georgia Quick Start, the state’s workforce training program.

Walmart’s next-gen centers in Greencastle and Stockton each employ more than 1,000 people.
Walmart already runs 11 supply chain facilities in Georgia. It employs more than 65,300 people in the state.

In Stockton, the most recent center, those jobs came three years after Walmart announced the site in October 2023.

Stockton opened in 2026, the year Walmart gave when it announced the site.
Carnesville broke ground on the schedule Georgia set in August, which called for construction to start in late 2026.

Worth noting

Walmart is also building a fulfillment center for bulky goods in the Southeast, near Gastonia, North Carolina. The $300 million, 1.2 million-square-foot center will ship items such as patio furniture and lawnmowers. It is due to open in 2027 with about 300 jobs.