DELAWARE CITY – Snow Joe, a manufacturer of outdoor products, has leased the last warehouse at the Delaware City Logistics Park off U.S. Route 13.
The 18-year-old, New Jersey-based company launched with its original electric snow shovel called the Snow Joe. It has since branched out into electric lawn mowers, portable power generators, pressure washers, and other branded products that are sold in Walmart and Home Depot, as well as on Amazon, QVC, HSN and more. It reportedly shipped 12 million units in 2020 and has reached 1.2 million customers, as of April 2021.
Snow Joe did not respond to a request for comment on the new distribution center and how many jobs it may create, but it is already advertising for a number of jobs there, including in logistics administration, facility management, human resources, and CDL drivers.
In 2020, Snow Joe expanded its distribution network to the West Coast, leasing a 500,000-square-foot warehouse outside Olympia, Wash. It also has two warehouses in New Jersey and one in North Carolina aside from its corporate offices, and reportedly plans to open distribution points in South Carolina, New York, and Texas. Snow Joe reportedly has 2.8 million square feet of space in operation throughout its distribution network.
The future Delaware distribution center is a 207,837-square-foot warehouse, located at 794 School House Road, in a logistics park being developed by Kansas City-based NorthPoint Development, which did not respond to a request for comment on the lease.
The fourth and final warehouse planned for the logistics park that replaced a 190-acre former AkzoNobel property near Delaware City is the smallest of the bunch, featuring about 136 parking spaces. The four industrial buildings total 2 million square feet of distribution and fulfillment space. The developer bought the land in a $10 million sale in 2018, according to county land records, and has poured funding into the site to attract distribution-focused tenants near the interchange with Route 1.
Current tenants include Newacme, an Oregon-based retailer and distributor of trampolines, salon equipment, pet supplies and more that signed on last spring and plans to create about 30 jobs.
Dart Container, maker of the ubiquitous red Solo Cup as well as other Styrofoam and plastic food packaging containers and cutlery, was the first tenant in 2020, pledging to bring between 60 to 70 jobs to the facility.
Amazon is the park’s most high-profile tenant, leasing a half-million square-foot building at the site as a last-mile distribution center last year. The e-commerce giant has yet to occupy its building though, and a company spokesman did not have an update on its timetable last week.
In remarks on the first three landing companies at the park last year, Delaware Prosperity Partnership President and CEO Kurt Foreman told Delaware Business Times that it “confirms Delaware’s value proposition as a strategic and cost-effective place for industrial and distribution development. Delaware’s diversity of companies in this space is an added benefit to our growth in ecommerce and logistics – and in job opportunities for Delawareans.”
