Australian supermarket mega-chain Woolworths announced earlier this week that it will be building two new distribution centres in Sydney, potentially creating hundreds of new jobs. According to the company, over 600 jobs will be created during the construction process, and the new centres will support almost 900 ongoing jobs when completed.

At the same time, however, the company is closing an older centre which currently employs around 330 people. While the announcement did not go into whether these staff will be laid off or redeployed, it's possible that a number of the new jobs may be taken up by redeployments.

Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci said of the upcoming closure: “We understand the impact these decisions have on our team members and never take them lightly. We’ll explore redeployment opportunities wherever possible, and provide a wide range of support and career transition services in the lead up to the site closure. We’ll also look to draw on our Future of Work Fund to support reskilling programs.”

The new centres are part of the supermarket chain's move to modernise and expand its supply chain network. Woolworths employs approximately 215,000 people, but has not made public the breakdown of how many are in its supply chain division.