The world’s largest provider of health care materials to office-based dental and medical practitioners has begun operations at its newly expanded southwest U.S. regional distribution hub in Fort Worth, Texas, that is now the company’s biggest distribution hub in its global network.
Henry Schein, a publicly traded supplier of more than 300,000 branded products with 58 distribution and manufacturing centers in 33 countries and territories, began its distribution operations following a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday. The new distribution hub developed by Hillwood marks the latest expansion of a company founded by Henry Schein with a storefront pharmacy in Queens, New York, in 1932. Globally, the company has more than 25,000 employees and more than 1 million customers.
“Everything is bigger in Texas and as you’ll see, this is big,” said Stan Bergman, chairman of the board and CEO of Henry Schein, during the grand opening ceremony. “We were expecting a large contract from the federal government, which has still not been awarded and we asked [the developer] to keep this space vacant for us, which they did for 18 months or two years. It was not an easy thing for any landlord to do, but there’s a tremendous amount of trust between our organizations and we appreciate it.”
The new distribution center at 3701 Litsey Road in Fort Worth is Henry Schein’s largest hub in its U.S. network, with it being 30% larger than its next largest hub in Indianapolis. The new, nearly 811,000-square-foot facility replaces its former 242,000-square-foot distribution center in nearby Grapevine, Texas, where it had operated for more than 20 years.
Most of Henry Schein’s employees relocated to the new Fort Worth facility with the 90-year-old company employing 255 workers. The hub has a 99.5% accuracy rate on shipping 15,000 cartons from the facility daily, company officials said.
The company shipped personal protective equipment, such as masks and gloves, to doctors, as well as COVID-19 tests during the pandemic’s peak with employees working long hours seven days a week to get through that period of national uncertainty. Later, the company was struck with a cybersecurity issue leaving Henry Schein having to revert to manual shipping for a period without disruption to business, Bergman said.
Compared to those prior challenges, Bergman said the North Texas operations group made the relocation from Grapevine to Fort Worth look easy.
Ross Perot Jr., chairman of Hillwood, said it was an honor to work with Henry Schein on its lease and expansion in the region.
“We are only half developed with a total of 27,000 acres here,” Perot said during the ceremony, joking that he’d save some land for the company to continue expanding in North Texas. “We want to make sure you grow and are successful and we are honored to be on the team.”
The deal was years in the making, Reid Goetz, a senior vice president of industrial development for Hillwood, told CoStar News, with the company beginning to look for an expansion of its distribution hub in late 2020 and early 2021. And is the beginning of what is expected to be a long-term relationship between the two companies, he said.
“We are in the customer business,” he added. “We build buildings, but it’s all about helping the customers grow.”