Flexport Takes Its Fulfillment Network to Canada and the UK, With Continental Europe Next

Flexport has opened its first fulfillment operations outside the United States, launching centers in Mississauga, Ontario, near Toronto Pearson International Airport, and in Manchester, England, the company said in a blog post this week. Inbound receiving at both sites began in July; the first outbound customer orders are scheduled for September. Flexport says it plans to add continental Europe to the network in 2027.

The Mississauga facility carries Health Canada certifications covering medical products, supplements and consumer goods — a specific regulatory detail that signals Flexport is positioning the site for healthcare and CPG brands, not just general e-commerce parcels. In Manchester, Flexport is running two partner-operated facilities rather than its own leased footprint, both built around AutoStore automated storage and retrieval systems, robotic cube-storage technology that the company says lets it store roughly four times the inventory in a quarter of the floor space a conventional warehouse would need.

Built on the bones of Shopify Logistics

This international push extends a fulfillment business Flexport largely inherited rather than built from scratch. Flexport acquired Shopify Logistics — including the Deliverr fulfillment network and associated warehouse infrastructure — in a 2023 deal that handed Shopify an equity stake in Flexport in return. That acquisition gave Flexport its first real domestic fulfillment, B2B distribution and last-mile delivery capabilities layered onto what had been primarily an ocean and air freight forwarding business. Two-plus years later, the Canada and UK launches are the first sign that management is treating fulfillment as a network to export internationally rather than a domestic add-on.

Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen framed the move as demand-driven rather than speculative: "Our customers built demand in Canada and the UK long before they had a good way to serve it," he said, adding that existing U.S. customers using Flexport's fulfillment network have already seen cost and efficiency gains the company wants to replicate abroad. Flexport says it now serves more than 13,000 companies across its logistics platform, though it did not break out how many of those use fulfillment services specifically versus freight forwarding alone.

What it means for shippers and 3PLs

Cross-border DTC brands get a same-platform option. A U.S. brand already using Flexport for freight forwarding and domestic fulfillment can now, in principle, extend into Canadian and UK fulfillment without onboarding a second 3PL or re-platforming its order-management integration. For mid-size DTC and CPG shippers currently juggling separate fulfillment vendors per country, that consolidation is the concrete pitch — the question is whether Flexport's rates and service levels in two brand-new markets can match specialists who have been running Canadian and UK fulfillment for years.

The UK model is a tell. Flexport chose partner-operated facilities in Manchester rather than its own leased and staffed warehouses — the same asset-light approach many 3PLs use to enter a new geography quickly without committing capital before demand is proven. Shippers evaluating the UK option should ask directly who operates day-to-day fulfillment there and what service-level guarantees follow from a partner relationship versus a Flexport-run site, since accountability structures can differ meaningfully between the two.

Automation density is becoming table stakes, not a differentiator. AutoStore systems are now common across the fulfillment industry — competitors including Ocado, Ryder and several regional 3PLs run comparable ASRS technology. Flexport citing a 4x storage-density improvement is a real operational number, but it describes what AutoStore itself typically delivers rather than something proprietary to Flexport, so shippers should weigh it as a baseline expectation for a modern fulfillment center rather than a unique Flexport advantage.