Grocer and department store operator, the John Lewis Partnership, announced an agreement with Tesco to lease a one million square foot distribution centre at Fenny Lock in Milton Keynes on Wednesday.
The retailer said the move would help it meet growing customer demand for online orders, adding that since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, online sales had grown to more than 60% of John Lewis’ total sales, from a previous 40%.
It said the warehouse, leased for 11 years, would become its second-largest distribution centre after its two million square foot campus located four miles away, at Magna Park in Milton Keynes.
Over 2021, John Lewis said it would be investing £50m in John Lewis’ e-commerce website and its app and creating more virtual services and events, with a further £100m to be committed to its online growth over the course of our five-year strategy.
It had also signed a three-year lease agreement for a 300,000 square foot distribution centre at Bardon in Leicestershire, which it would start using in August in time for the ‘Black Friday’ sales.
That site would be operated by Clipper Logistics on the company’s behalf.
John Lewis currently uses 10 distribution sites across the UK to fulfill online and shop orders, in Milton Keynes, Northampton, Corby and Redditch, and the Waitrose national distribution centre in Milton Keynes, as well as an ancillary site in Northampton where it processes customer returns and technical repairs to reduce the number of items sent to landfill.
“This one-of-a-kind distribution centre represents a fantastic opportunity to power the continued growth of johnlewis.com, ensuring that we can keep pace with customer demand – both for our products and for our wide range of fulfilment and delivery options,” said John Lewis partner and executive director Andrew Murphy.
“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.”
Murphy said the partnership would use the Fenny Lock site to fulfill 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.”
