Michelin, Lactalis and ofi Expand California Logistics Footprint
A cluster of land sales, leases and construction projects at Wonderful Logistics Center in Shafter, California, is creating a larger distribution base for dairy products, food ingredients and other goods serving the western United States. The announcement is significant, but the figures need separating: not every square foot is new construction, and not all of it is food logistics.
Wonderful Real Estate said on October 15 that Michelin North America and cold-storage developer RL Cold had completed land purchases in September, while Olam Food Ingredients, or ofi, had signed a long-term warehouse lease. Lactalis is the intended long-term tenant for RL Cold’s planned refrigerated building.
The food-specific footprint is 667,000 square feet
RL Cold bought more than 20 acres for a 317,000-square-foot cold-storage facility that is expected to serve as Lactalis’ western distribution hub. The site is intended to consolidate dairy products from the company’s California operations and position inventory near major western markets and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Separately, ofi agreed to lease 350,000 square feet of food-grade warehousing, including 4,400 square feet of office space, in a 1.1-million-square-foot building completed in 2023. The building is also occupied by CJ Logistics and Smucker’s. Wonderful said it had temporarily provided ofi with 190,000 square feet in a neighboring warehouse while the permanent space was being prepared.
Together, the Lactalis cold store and ofi lease account for 667,000 square feet of clearly food-specific capacity. Only the 317,000-square-foot Lactalis facility is described as new construction; ofi is taking space in an existing building. That distinction matters when assessing new physical capacity rather than total occupied space.
Container depot and planned inland rail terminal at Wonderful Logistics Center. Image supplied by Wonderful Logistics Center with its October 15 announcement.
What makes up the broader three-million-square-foot claim
The developer’s headline figure of more than 3 million square feet refers to a wider package. Michelin purchased 100 acres for three warehouse and distribution buildings totaling more than 1.6 million square feet. Ross Stores signed a 10-year lease covering a 250,000-square-foot expansion, scheduled for delivery in the third quarter of 2027. Construction is also under way on a separate 1-million-square-foot speculative building at 2902 Express Avenue.
Those three components total at least 2.85 million square feet before the Lactalis cold store is added, taking the identified new-build program above 3.16 million square feet. The calculation is based on the developer’s disclosed areas; it should not be confused with the separate sale of an already completed 1,088,047-square-foot building or ofi’s lease of existing space.
Against the 17 million square feet that Wonderful says is already operating at the campus, the identified new development is equivalent to roughly 19 percent of the current floor area. Michelin is responsible for about half of that new-build total, while the Lactalis facility is the main directly food-related construction component.
Why Shafter matters to food distribution
Shafter sits in California’s Central Valley, close to agricultural and food-processing regions but linked to the country’s largest container-port complex. The campus has BNSF mainline access, an operating container depot and a planned inland rail terminal that Wonderful expects to begin domestic and international service in 2027.
For Lactalis, that geography could reduce the number of handoffs between production, cold storage and customer delivery. For ofi, food-grade space within a large multi-tenant hub can support ingredient flows while sharing access to transport infrastructure used by other shippers. The projects do not eliminate congestion, refrigeration energy costs or port disruption, but they concentrate inventory and freight options in one inland location.
The City of Shafter describes the wider industrial park as a 1,625-acre master-planned development on the BNSF main line with an intermodal facility serving traffic to and from Los Angeles and Long Beach. A separate California environmental filing for the proposed western expansion describes up to 21.062 million square feet of industrial buildings on about 1,308 acres. That expansion remains a planning proposal, not completed capacity.
Claims that still need verification
Wonderful estimates that the transactions and developments will create nearly $1 billion of total economic impact. It also says the existing campus supports about 13,000 jobs and that a 50-million-square-foot full buildout could support more than 30,000 jobs and generate about $175 million in annual tax revenue. These are company projections; the release does not publish the underlying economic model.
The companies have not disclosed land prices, construction budgets, expected employment at the Lactalis or Michelin buildings, refrigeration specifications, power requirements or detailed completion dates for most projects. Michelin’s construction start and the third-quarter 2027 target for the Ross expansion provide milestones, but permits, tenant fit-outs and commissioning will determine when the announced space becomes operational.
What to watch next
The most important near-term indicators are visible construction progress on the Lactalis cold store, preparation of ofi’s permanent warehouse space, delivery schedules for Michelin’s three buildings and whether the inland rail terminal enters service in 2027 as planned. Those milestones will show whether Shafter’s new capacity becomes a functioning food and goods-distribution cluster rather than remaining a collection of real-estate commitments.
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