Medline — the nation’s largest privately held manufacturer of medical supplies — wants to lease a 585,580-square-foot distribution center being built in Manteca next door to the Manteca Unified School District office complex on Louise Avenue west of Airport Way.
It will increase the firm’s footprint in South San Joaquin County to 1.6 million square feet when two existing distribution centers are taken into account. The two distribution centers are near Stockton Metro Airport and in the massive Prologis International Park of Commerce on the western side of Tracy.
Medline has applied to include the 49.72-acre site in Manteca’s Pacific Business Center where Amazon in November opened a Prime Now distribution center that delivers 25,000 items across 25 hours within an hour for a $7.99 charge or within two hours for free. Amazon employs more than 100 workers at the Manteca location.
Medline has not indicated how many jobs they would create in Manteca. Other Medline distribution centers of similar size typically employ between 50 and 100 workers.
A check of open positions available at Medline distribution centers in Stockton and Tracy shows Class A truck driving jobs paying $63,000 to $73,000 a year that have a $3,000 signing bonus.
Floor jobs in the distribution centers are offered at $14 to $18.60 an hour. There were also supervisorial and management jobs listed but they did not have a salary range.
Medline initially relocated its Reno operations ton Lathrop’s Crossroads Business Park in 2002 to better serve the Northern California, Nevada and Utah markets. At one point Medline had expanded its Lathrop operations to include the ability to handle 100 containers bringing manufactured medical supply parts into the United States from 15 Asian cities via the Port of Oakland.
Medline sells more than 350,000 products across all medical care needs.
The firm has more than a century of serving the healthcare industry. Medline has enjoyed 45 consecutive years of growth including double digit growth for the past 20 years. They have 15,000 employees worldwide with more than 3,000 positions added since 2013. The firm conducts business in more than 90 countries.
Forbes’ 2016 list of the largest privately held companies in the United States ranked Medline at No. 47. The firm’s annual sales are pushing $10 billion.
The free trade zone designation allows goods to be landed, stored, handled, manufactured, or reconfigured, and re-exported under specific customs regulation and generally not subject to customs duty. Medline’s application for free trade zone designation for the Manteca site is pending before the federal International Trade Organization that is part of the Department of Commerce.
Medline when it opens would be Manteca’s second major firm that supports the healthcare industry.
Crothall Health Services industrial laundry serving hospitals opened in 2014 along Airport Way less than a mile north of the Medline construction site. Crothall opened with 89 jobs is now running seven days a week with two 10-hour shifts using 285 full-time workers.
Once the 565,580-square-foot building where Medline is locating is finished, it will mark the transformation of the bulk of a site that once housed a magnesium processing plant built to support the nation’s effort in World War II.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
