LEESPORT, Penn. - Ashley Furniture has broken ground on a 465,000 sq.ft. expansion, which will add an e-commerce fulfillment and distribution center to its facility in Leesport, Pennsylvania.

Officials said the multi-million dollar expansion will bring the Ontelaunee Township facility to nearly 1.7 million square feet, and is expected to add 200 jobs to the 1,300 workforce at the location. Kinsley Construction Inc. in Reedling, Pennsylvania, was selected to provide design and construction services.

This marks Ashley Furniture's second groundbreaking in less than a month for an e-commerce fulfillment and distribution center. In late June, Ashley broke ground on a 500,000-square-foot expansion in its home base of Arcadia, Wisconsin. Both facilities are scheduled for completion in February 2018.

"This investment in our company today serves as an example to our commitment to our customers across the globe," said Todd Wanek, the president and CEO of Ashley Furniture Industries. "As the demand for faster deliveries of product is becoming more frequent in today's market, this expansion allows our company to have additional space to service our customer base in a timelier fashion."

The expansion will also enable the residential furniture manufacturer to increase production, said Ron Wanek, Ashley founder and chairman. "This will also be an e-commerce and distribution that's being added, but it will also give us more room for manufacturing since some of the existing warehouse will move into the new area," he said in an interview with WFMZ-69 News.