DPD UK will open its new £150m (US$206m) state-of-the-art parcel hub in Hinckley, Leicestershire, as part of its plans for handling an anticipated record-breaking peak season.
The new hub is DPD’s fifth in the UK and one of the largest fully automated domestic parcel hubs in Europe. It is also DPD’s most eco-friendly and technologically advanced hub to date.
Hub 5 features a solar PV system with over 6,000 panels, providing an output of 2.4MW. The power generated by the system will enable the hub offices to operate off grid during daytime working hours with the excess power exported back to the national grid to supply green energy.
The new giant hub is located close to J1 of the M69, just two miles from two other key DPD sites in the area: Hub 4 and the firm’s International Gateway, both of which opened in Sketchley in 2015.
The main hub building is over 500m long, 42m wide and occupies a 40-acre site, with 3,000m of conveyor to enable it to sort 72,000 parcels per hour.
It will be DPD’s most technologically advanced hub to date with over 300 security cameras and the very latest sortation technology with optical character recognition software and video coding to automatically scan address information.
Justin Pegg, chief operating officer at DPD, commented, “To have Hub 5 open and fully operational going into the Black Friday and Christmas period is fantastic news for the operation and for our customers. Our giant hubs in Hinckley and those in the West Midlands give us the capacity and the flexibility we need to manage the significant volume and the major peaks at this time of year. We are planning for record parcel volumes again this Christmas and we have been able to prepare for those volumes with Hub 5 in mind.
“With Hub 5 we now have three of the largest fully automated parcel hubs in Europe. Over the last 10 years we’ve invested in growing our network capacity, not only with the new hubs but also with close to 40 purpose-built, brand new regional distribution centers, giving us the most efficient parcel operation in the UK.”