Canadian Tire Corporation

Canadian Tire’s New Distribution Centre in Bolton, Canada, is 1.5 Million square feet making it the largest distribution centre in Canada. The Centre handles bulk, general merchandise including tools, sporting goods, home living, automotive and seasonal outdoors products, over 15,500 SKUs, and employs people across Two 10-hour shifts per day/7 days per week.

Upon opening, Canadian Tire faced two primary air-related problems that were found in most busy warehouses:

1) Cold Air Infiltration in Winter – Each day, over 350 trailers come and go, opening and closing the doors each time. Given Canadian winters, each time the doors are open, air as cold as -30C/22F degrees rushes in and creates an uncomfortable environment for Associates working in this area. Combating this with high-energy heaters is ineffective and cost-prohibitive. Instead, Canadian Tire needed better circulate the existing warm air within the warehouse to dilute the cold air and reduce potential heating costs.

2) Poor Air Quality in the Bulk Storage Area – Room “B” is for all their bulk storage SKUs and given the lack of packaging around these items, a lot of airborne contaminate is created every time quantities of these items are moved around. These airborne particles can be very hazardous to the employees that work in Room “B”. Therefore, Canadian Tire needed to clean the air in this vast space to protect the employees better.