Worldpac Plans 413,000-Square-Foot Automated Georgia DC

By Olivia Hart

Worldpac plans to open a 413,000-square-foot automated distribution center in Forest Park, Georgia, in the first half of 2027; it expects more than 150 jobs and customer shipments to begin in spring 2027. The site will add automotive-parts capacity around Atlanta and serve Worldpac branches and professional repair customers across the Southeast and surrounding markets.

What does the Forest Park facility add?

The warehouse sits at 2160 Anvil Block Road, Suite 200, about eight miles from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. It is more than 250,000 square feet larger than Worldpac’s existing facility in Norcross, Georgia, which is roughly 28 miles away.

Forest Park will be Worldpac’s first distribution center to use automated storage and retrieval, a robotic system that stores inventory and brings parts to workstations for picking and processing. AutoStore will provide robots that travel across a storage grid, retrieve items from bins and deliver them to employees.

“We are excited to expand Worldpac’s distribution presence in the Atlanta metro market and strengthen our ability to serve customers throughout the Southeastern United States,” said Rich Tannenbaum, Worldpac’s chief operating officer. Forest Park will serve branches and customers throughout the Southeast and surrounding markets.

In plain terms, Forest Park expands the Atlanta-area footprint without disclosing whether Worldpac will consolidate operations at Norcross.

How will automation change fulfillment?

Worldpac says the system should improve order accuracy, inventory management and processing speed while increasing the amount of merchandise the facility can handle. The design also seeks to reduce employee travel through warehouse aisles and manual picking requirements.

“The Forest Park facility represents a major step forward in our use of robotics and automation, helping us improve speed, accuracy, and efficiency,” Tannenbaum said.

Those remain stated objectives rather than published operating results. Worldpac has disclosed no baseline for picking speed, order accuracy, labor hours or throughput, so the announcement does not establish how Forest Park will compare with Norcross or other distribution centers.

What remains unproven?

Worldpac has not disclosed:

• The project cost or number of AutoStore robots to be installed.
• Whether Forest Park will replace the Norcross operation.
• Projected productivity improvements or expected order volumes.
• The amount of additional inventory the facility will hold.

Those omissions matter for Worldpac’s gross margin (revenue remaining after the cost of goods sold) and inventory turns (how quickly stock sells and replenishes). Faster picking could lower unit labor costs, but no cost, labor-hour or volume figures support that conclusion.

Worldpac also has not said how many orders the site expects to process. The facility could support higher service levels without, on the disclosed evidence, improving inventory turns.

In plain terms, the announcement establishes the operating model, not the return on the investment.

What does this mean for repair-shop economics?

Worldpac distributes original-equipment (OE) parts and aftermarket automotive replacement parts to professional repair shops and other automotive service businesses across North America. Its replacement-parts catalog covers domestic and imported vehicles, with inventory spanning makes, models and production years. That assortment makes storage density, accurate retrieval and rapid order processing central to the network’s economics.

Professional repair shops depend on distributors for parts availability and timely deliveries so they can complete customer repairs. Worldpac’s automation targets accuracy and processing speed, but the company has published no baseline fill rate, order-cycle time, delivery performance or shop-level savings. It therefore cannot quantify how much repair-completion time will fall.

Strategically, additional capacity can strengthen Worldpac’s service proposition to repair-shop customers and branches. Yet no market-share, fill-rate, supplier-commitment or unit-cost data demonstrate a shift in channel power. AutoStore is the only equipment supplier named, and the announcement identifies no automotive-parts vendors.

In plain terms, Worldpac is targeting parts availability and faster service, but neither benefit has yet been measured.

When will it open?

Worldpac expects to complete construction and install the automated systems before customer shipments begin in spring 2027. The next measurable checkpoint will be its operating data: order volumes, inventory levels, picking rates and cost per order will determine whether the 413,000-square-foot site improves margin and service rather than merely adding capacity.