International shipping and logistics specialist ePost Global has opened a 104,000 square-foot processing facility in Itasca, Illinois, nearly three times the footprint of the operation it replaces near Chicago O'Hare International Airport. The new site is now the company's largest US hub for ecommerce parcels and mail, and arrives ahead of what executives describe as the busiest peak season in the company's history.

The Itasca building consolidates automated sortation with advanced scanning, optical character recognition and piece-to-container verification under one roof. ePost said the technology stack allows exceptions to surface in real time, lifts sort accuracy, cuts repeat scans and routes shipments directly from induction into outbound containers bound for destination hubs worldwide.

What does the expansion change operationally?

Kelly Martinez, co-president of ePost Global, framed the move as a response to sustained demand that had outgrown the prior site. She said: "Chicago has become our highest-volume US operation, and we reached the point where demand was outgrowing the space."

Martinez added: "Coming off a record year, we're on track for another record peak season for ePost Global. This [expansion] gives us the capacity to innovate, scale our operations, and deliver the flexibility and reliability our customers need."

Why Itasca, why now?

Co-founder and co-president Fabrizio Alvear tied the investment to forward planning rather than catch-up growth. "When e-commerce brands and retailers are growing, their shipping partner needs to be ready to grow with them," Alvear said.

He continued: "We are investing ahead of demand so we can accept more volume without imposing artificial limits when capacity matters most. This facility gives us room to serve customers through the coming peak season and continue scaling well beyond it."

How big is the new operation?

The 104,000 sq ft footprint supports three handling profiles in a single site: small parcels, poly mailers and larger packages. ePost said the additional throughput provides flexibility during seasonal surges and during network disruptions, when capacity across competing shipping networks tightens fastest.

The company did not disclose headcount, capital expenditure or specific parcel-sorting throughput rates for the Itasca site. ePost's previous Chicago-area operation had reached full capacity, according to the company, creating the need for a larger, more advanced building designed for continued growth.

What sits inside the building?

ePost's Itasca operation pairs automated sortation with advanced scanning and tracking, OCR and piece-to-container verification. The combination is designed to identify exceptions in real time, improve sort accuracy, reduce repeat scanning and manual handling, and route more shipments directly from induction into the correct outbound container to global destination hubs.

The company framed the technology upgrade as central to the expansion thesis: greater physical capacity only matters if the operations inside it can move volume without the bottlenecks that defined the prior, smaller site.

What to watch next

The facility opens with ePost's Chicago operation already its highest-volume US site. Quarterly volume disclosures, peak-season capacity utilization at Itasca and any additional US hub announcements through 2025 will indicate whether the threefold footprint lift matches underlying parcel growth, or leaves room for further expansion in the Chicago market.