RK Logistics Group opens up a new Bay Area-based warehouse

RK Logistics Group, a Silicon Valley provider of warehousing, e-commerce fulfillment and supply chain management services, recently announced it has opened up a new Hayward, Calif.-based commercial logistics facility to support the local manufacturing of electric vehicles. The company said that this is its 12th Bay Area warehousing facility, covering a cumulative 1.3 million square-feet.

RK Logistics said that this new warehouse, which is located at 31353 Huntwood Avenue, Hayward, Calif., is a shared space facility co-located with electric automobile manufacturer Tesla, with RK accounting for 140,000 square-feet of the facility, which includes dock and cargo offload space, product storage, and staging and administrative offices.

And it added that this facility, which represents the third one opened by RK Logistics over the last year, will handle various tasks, including: receiving and unloading containerized cargo (mainly shipments of batteries from the Port of Oakland); managing inventory levels, receiving orders and builds, and delivering just-in-time truckload shipments to the Fremont, Calif.-based Tesla manufacturing site.

“The Silicon Valley is the heart of the electric vehicle market, for both manufacturing as well as Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers,” said Rock Magnan, president of RK Logistics Group, in a statement. “These are complex, demanding supply chains. We’ve supported local automotive manufacturers since 2014 and have seen demand for dedicated, experienced EV logistics services increase dramatically over that time. Hayward continues to be a highly strategic location for RK and our customers,” Magnan added. “We strive to be super-responsive and flexible as we address these current and emerging needs of our clients as their markets continue to change and adapt to economic and world events.”

A RK spokesman provided LM with additional detail on this new facility in a Q&A below.

LM: What drove the need for RK to open this new facility?

RK Logistics: There is continued demand from our customer base for increased storage capacity, primarily supporting the EV battery and automobile manufacturing verticals in the San Francisco Bay Area.  We also are seeing growing demand for space from our clients in semiconductor manufacturing.  Even though their business is slowing, affected to some extend by restrictions doing business in China, we are seeing a rise in reshoring.

Products and tools that were built overseas are being re-shored to U.S. plants, and that is increasing the demand for more warehouse space, and 3PLs with the specific capabilities to serve this industry, which RK has been doing for 20 years.

We deal with multiple electric vehicle manufacturers and semiconductor companies, all which have demand for more space, to support exiting products as well as new ones. So, we are adding space to keep pace with that growth.

LM: What are the main benefits of it for customers? (is Tesla the main client for this space?)

RK Logistics: The main advantage to the customer is this is a brand-new building that has the proper fire protection and other design elements that allow us to safely store dangerous goods, such as EV batteries. It also has 30-foot ceilings (vs. the standard 24) so we can install higher racking, enabling us to store more goods per square foot.  Tesla is a customer.

Also, from a location perspective, this is our closest facility to the port of Oakland and the Oakland airport, so we are well positioned to service the import and export needs of our clients from these major shipping points.

LM: What services does RK provide out of this facility? 

RK Logistics: Permits to handle dangerous goods, inbound receipt of goods, domestic and international shipping, kitting, storage, inventory management, and sequencing of products for delivery to line side manufacturing on a just in time basis.