Penguin Random House has reached an agreement with officials in Crawfordsville, Ind., to expand the size of its distribution facility located in the city. As part of the agreement, PRH will receive $5.6 million in tax incentives. The publisher has shipped titles out of the Crawfordsville center, which employs about 900 people, since 2001.
The planned 650,000-sq.-ft. increase will enable the facility to double its annual shipments of physical print books, PRH said in its announcement, and will result in “more rapid and efficient daily deliveries to booksellers across the U.S.” In addition, PRH said that the expansion will help the publisher meet it carbon neutrality goals by eliminating the need to move inventory to and from rented offsite facilities, and by allowing PRH to plan its shipments more effectively. No start date for the expansion was announced.
The announcement of the expansion of the Crawfordsville facility follows the decision by PRH to retrofit PRH UK’s Grantham Book Services warehouse, located in Grantham, England, into a new operational hub, from which PRH US will fulfill orders from customers in continental Europe. Both initiatives are part of the publisher’s plan to upgrade its global supply chain. In the U.S., PRH also has two distribution centers in Maryland and one in Reno, Nev.
