Planning permission has been granted for DPD UK to construct a second parcel sorting center in Hinckley, Leicestershire. The new £150m (US$208m) hub will be DPD’s fifth in the UK and will be located just two miles from its neighboring superhub, which only opened in 2015.
Hub 5 will cover more than 270,000ft² and will be capable of processing more than 71,000 parcels an hour, increasing DPD’s total overnight parcel sorting capacity by 60%. It will also create 750 new jobs. Building work is likely to commence in October 2018 with completion scheduled for October 2020.
Dwain McDonald, DPD’s CEO, said, “I am delighted to announce this very significant investment in new jobs and infrastructure. We are continuing to experience strong growth in demand for our services, which is why we are announcing another massive hub project less than three years after we opened Hub 4.
“In that time, we have seen seismic changes in retail behavior in the UK, with major events like Black Friday creating bigger and longer periods of high demand at different times during the year, and then Christmas itself becoming even more of an online retail focused event.
“We have invested hugely in our infrastructure nationwide over the last six years, moving our older depots to brand new, larger and purpose-built facilities or upgrading them to state-of-the-art 60,000ft² distribution centers. By 2020, we will have built three of the largest overnight sorting hubs in Europe. That level of unprecedented investment is what ensures we stay ahead of the chasing pack and gives us the capacity to support our retail customers for many years to come.”
Bill Cullen, chief executive of Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council, said, “This significant investment in DPD’s new super-hub along with new manufacturing and logistics development in this £225m (US$313m) ‘Employment Park’ will bring significant job opportunities as well as apprenticeship opportunities to the local area, both during construction and in the new facilities being provided.”
The new investment follows a period of sustained growth for DPD, driven by the boom in online shopping in the UK and DPD’s own investment in market leading tech. DPD’s unique one-hour delivery slot service, Predict, means that all customers receive notification of their delivery slot in advance, along with a series of ‘inflight options’ so they can make arrangements for their delivery, even if they aren’t going to be home.
March 7, 2018
