ASDA/George supercentre spells good business in Teesside

03 Nov '12

4 min read

A giant warehouse, which will be the UK import and deconsolidation hub for the Asda George clothing brand is creating over 400 jobs at the Wynyard Park site in Billingham. The new facility, developed and operated by Leeds based Clipper Logistics, was completed in August and officially opened on October 31st in an event attended by local dignitaries.

The building has three levels of mezzanine floor which creates over 840,000 sqft of operational space, with the design allowing for further growth to 1.2M sqft – or in other words it’s the size of 11 football pitches which can grow to almost 16. Over 770 tonnes of steel was used in the construction of the building, which, will receive and despatch upto 3million items of clothing per week to feed the George Clothing network.

The Clipper, Wynyard Park facility has been created to be a shared use operation – with Asda/George being the anchor customer. The location was chosen as it was close to the major import centre at Teesport operated by PD Ports. The building has been created to offer a modern and environmentally friendly supply chain solution, allowing retailers to benefit from its portcentric location – the design was developed to offer greater flexibility to support the changing demands of multichannel retailing. The site will provide retailers with a faster, slicker and more environmentally conscious retail solution, whilst reducing cost and allowing for “just in time” deliveries into regional distribution centres.

The building has been designed to be in line with high environmental standards, uses natural light wherever possible and has motion sensitive lighting throughout the facility, meaning energy is saved and operating costs are kept to a minimum. The design of the building will allow for other retailers to take advantage of this best practice solution at Wynyard Park through a shared-user proposition, without the need for further major capital investment.

In an unparalleled ten-year deal, Asda George will occupy over 70% of the operational space at the supercentre, which will feed its three UK regional clothing distribution centres. Ian Stansfield, Distribution Director for the retail giant said: “Clipper has proven itself to be an invaluable partner to our business and the success of the bespoke solutions they have created for us has brought about significant cost and efficiency savings to our operations.

“On the strength of this success, and our growing clothing business, we have taken the unprecedented step of signing this ten year contract for Clipper to provide deconsolidation solutions at the new Clipper Wynyard site.”

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