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UK's John Lewis Partnership rents 1 million square feet warehouse
14 Aug '21
3 min read
Pic: John Lewis Partnership
UK’s The John Lewis Partnership has signed an agreement with Tesco to lease a one million square feet distribution centre at Fenny Lock in Milton Keynes. The move will help the company meet growing customer demand for online orders. Since the start of the pandemic, online sales have grown from 40 per cent to over 60 per cent of John Lewis’s total sales.
The warehouse, leased for 11 years, will become the second largest distribution centre after the company’s two million square feet campus just four miles away, at Magna Park in Milton Keynes. This year, the company is investing £50 million in the website and the fast growing John Lewis app and creating more virtual services and events, with a further £100 million to be committed to its online growth over the course of a five-year strategy, according to a press release by the company.
The John Lewis Partnership has also signed a three year lease agreement for a 300k square feet distribution centre at Bardon, Leicestershire which it will start using this month in time for Black Friday. The site will be operated by Clipper Logistics.
The currently uses ten distribution sites across the UK to fulfil online and shop orders: Magna Park sites 1,2, and 3 in Milton Keynes, Blakelands in Milton Keynes, Brackmills in Northampton, Grange Park in Northampton, Corby in Northamptonshire, Redditch in Worcestershire, the Waitrose National Distribution Centre in Milton Keynes, and an ancillary site in Northampton where it processes customer returns and technical repairs to reduce the number of items which get sent to landfill.
“This one-of-a-kind distribution centre represents a fantastic opportunity to power the continued growth of the company’s website, ensuring that we can keep pace with customer demand - both for our products and for our wide range of fulfilment and delivery options. We will invest in the site’s automation capability to support future growth and, over the next two years, we will recruit 500 new partners to work at the distribution centre, which we plan to start operating during summer 2022,” Andrew Murphy, partner and executive director of operations for the Partnership said.
“We will use the Fenny Lock site to fulfil customer orders for fashion, small home furnishing items and technology products. The proximity to our Magna Park campus will enable us to combine more customer orders, reducing both the number of packages we create by approximately one million per year and the number of lorries on the road, helping us to meet our target of being net zero carbon by 2035,” Murphy said.
The warehouse, leased for 11 years, will become the second largest distribution centre after the company’s two million square feet campus just four miles away, at Magna Park in Milton Keynes. This year, the company is investing £50 million in the website and the fast growing John Lewis app and creating more virtual services and events, with a further £100 million to be committed to its online growth over the course of a five-year strategy, according to a press release by the company.
The John Lewis Partnership has also signed a three year lease agreement for a 300k square feet distribution centre at Bardon, Leicestershire which it will start using this month in time for Black Friday. The site will be operated by Clipper Logistics.
The currently uses ten distribution sites across the UK to fulfil online and shop orders: Magna Park sites 1,2, and 3 in Milton Keynes, Blakelands in Milton Keynes, Brackmills in Northampton, Grange Park in Northampton, Corby in Northamptonshire, Redditch in Worcestershire, the Waitrose National Distribution Centre in Milton Keynes, and an ancillary site in Northampton where it processes customer returns and technical repairs to reduce the number of items which get sent to landfill.
“This one-of-a-kind distribution centre represents a fantastic opportunity to power the continued growth of the company’s website, ensuring that we can keep pace with customer demand - both for our products and for our wide range of fulfilment and delivery options. We will invest in the site’s automation capability to support future growth and, over the next two years, we will recruit 500 new partners to work at the distribution centre, which we plan to start operating during summer 2022,” Andrew Murphy, partner and executive director of operations for the Partnership said.
“We will use the Fenny Lock site to fulfil customer orders for fashion, small home furnishing items and technology products. The proximity to our Magna Park campus will enable us to combine more customer orders, reducing both the number of packages we create by approximately one million per year and the number of lorries on the road, helping us to meet our target of being net zero carbon by 2035,” Murphy said.
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