Online grocer Ocado has been granted approval from the local council to start building a £210m, 350,000 sq ft customer fulfilment centre on its Birch Coppice site in north Warwickshire.
North Warwickshire Borough Council has agreed to an extension of the warehouse facility on the 35 acre site, and Ocado has appointed Waldeck to provide civil and structural engineering services.
Work is expected to begin on site in January 2011 and the centre is due to be fully operational by September 2012. It will be the grocer’s second customer fulfilment centre and Ocado reckons it will create up to 2,000 jobs.
Matt Tyers, director of Waldeck, said: “We have been doing work for Ocado at their site in Hatfield since 2007 and have built up a good relationship with the company. This has resulted in us being awarded this job which is one of the biggest construction projects currently in the UK.
“This will be a high-tech, cutting edge facility capable of delivering between 180,000 and 200,000 orders a week. One of the logistical challenges we face is co-ordinating the external building works with the construction of the internal, highly sophisticated automated system and we’re liaising closely with Ocado’s in-house project management team to ensure everything goes to plan.”
Director of legal and business affairs at Ocado Neill Abrams said: “The new £210m distribution centre is a major investment for Ocado to ensure future growth of the company and we are very pleased to have Waldeck as a part of our design team to make sure this crucial project is delivered on time and on budget.”
