Daiso breaks ground on Yangju hub center, eyes 1,000 jobs

600 billion won investment, 205,742-square-meter automated logistics center

Omnichannel system to handle online and offline orders simultaneously, boosting delivery capacity

Aseong Daiso Chairman Park Jeong-bu (10th from right) and Yangju Mayor Jeong Deok-yeong (15th from right) join other attendees at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Yangju Hub Center at Eunnam Industrial Complex in Yangju on Monday. [Aseong Daiso]

Aseong Daiso held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday at Eunnam Industrial Complex in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province, marking the start of construction on its Yangju Hub Center, a combined online and offline logistics facility.

The center is targeted for completion in January 2029, with a total investment of 600 billion won ($454 million). About 400 people attended the ceremony, including Aseong Daiso Chairman Park Jeong-bu, Yangju Mayor Jeong Deok-yeong, National Assembly member Jeong Seong-ho, Yangju City Council Speaker Han Sang-min, former Industry and Resources Minister Lee Hee-beom, company executives, partner firm representatives and construction officials.

"I congratulate the first step of the Yangju Hub Center and hope it will become a new base that grows together with Yangju," Mayor Jeong said. "Yangju will continue to provide support and cooperation so that the center can be built stably and coexist with the local community."

The Yangju Hub Center will be the largest logistics center in the Aseong Daiso network and its fourth hub, following those in Namsa, Busan and Sejong. Once complete, it will supply products to more than 800 Daiso stores across the Greater Seoul area and Gangwon Province and process 50,000 Daiso Mall orders per day. The project is also expected to create more than 1,000 jobs and boost the local economy.

Eunnam Industrial Complex is an industrial zone of about 992,000 square meters under development across Doha-ri in Eunhyeon-myeon and Sangsu-ri in Nam-myeon, Yangju. The center will sit on a site of 111,405 square meters and have a total floor area of 205,742 square meters, rising four floors above ground with one below.

The facility will adopt an omnichannel logistics approach, processing both online and offline orders through a single integrated system. Unlike conventional setups that operate separate logistics streams for each channel, the center is designed to consolidate inventory and equipment across both. The aim is to cut logistics costs by reducing duplicate stock storage and minimizing inventory movement between channels.

The center will also deploy systems from Knapp, a global logistics automation company, including its OSR (Order Storage and Retrieval), GTP (Goods to Person) and ODS (Order Distribution System). A fleet of 478 high-speed OSR shuttles and 46 lifts will be capable of handling 20,000 orders per hour, with online and offline inventory managed together on a single shuttle rack. The GTP system automatically delivers items retrieved from OSR storage to workers for dispatch, while the ODS optimizes order sequencing and automates product delivery and outbound processing.

Among existing hub centers, the Namsa facility handles 230,000 orders per day, Busan handles 320,000 and Sejong handles 300,000. The Yangju Hub Center is targeting 350,000 orders per day. The Namsa Hub Center, which opened in December 2012, covers the Greater Seoul area and Gangwon Province, while the Busan Hub Center, which opened in September 2019, serves the Yeongnam and Honam regions. The Sejong Hub Center, set to open in April 2027, will handle the Chungcheong region, southern Greater Seoul and Daiso Mall logistics. The Yangju Hub Center will focus on supplying products to Seoul, northern Gyeonggi Province and northern Gangwon Province.

"We are breaking ground on the Yangju Hub Center, our fourth logistics facility, to lay the foundation that will support Aseong Daiso's continued business expansion," Chairman Park said. "We will hire local talent and work together with local businesses so that the Yangju Hub Center can grow alongside the community."

A rendering of Aseong Daiso's Yangju Hub Center [Aseong Daiso]

andy@heraldcorp.com