John Lewis Partnership acquires 1 million sq ft distribution centre to support rapid growth of Johnlewis.com
Wednesday 11 August 2021
- 500 new jobs to be created in Milton Keynes
- Ability to combine customer orders will reduce packages by approx one million per year
The John Lewis Partnership has today announced that it has signed an agreement with Tesco to lease a 1 million sq ft distribution centre at Fenny Lock in Milton Keynes.
The move will help us meet growing customer demand for online orders. Since the start of the pandemic, online sales have grown from 40% to over 60% of John Lewis’s total sales.
The warehouse, leased for 11 years, will become our second largest distribution centre after our 2 million sq ft campus just four miles away, at Magna Park in Milton Keynes.
Andrew Murphy, Partner and Executive Director of Operations for the Partnership said; “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.
“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.
“We will 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.”
This year, we are investing £50m in johnlewis.com and the fast growing John Lewis app and creating more virtual services and events, with a further £100m+ to be committed to our online growth over the course of our five-year strategy.
We have also signed a three year lease agreement for a 300k sqft distribution centre at Bardon, Leicestershire which we will start using this month in time for Black Friday this year. The site will be operated by Clipper Logistics on our behalf.
John Lewis currently uses ten distribution sites across the UK to fulfill 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 we process customer returns and technical repairs to reduce the number of items which get sent to landfill.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About the John Lewis Partnership
The John Lewis Partnership owns and operates two of Britain's best-loved retail brands - John Lewis and Waitrose. Started as a radical idea nearly a century ago, the Partnership is the largest employee-owned business in the UK and amongst the largest in the world, with over 80,000 employees who are all Partners in the business. Profits made are reinvested into the business - for customers and Partners. John Lewis operates 42 shops plus one outlet across the UK as well as johnlewis.com. Waitrose has 331 shops in England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, including 59 convenience branches, and another 27 shops at Welcome Break locations. The retailer's omnichannel business includes the online grocery service, Waitrose.com, as well as specialist online shops including waitrosecellar.com for wine and waitroseflorist.com for plants and flowers.