Davies Turner says its new multi-user distribution centre near Avonmouth, Bristol, is now fully operational.
The new hub at Central Park by Western Approach is the company’s largest to date at 150,000 sq ft (14,000 sq m) and adds to its nationwide warehousing network.
The building has a high bay fully racked area, with a top beam lift of 17.5 m and eaves height of 19 m, making it one of the highest in Europe for VNA forklift operations. The site can hold 27,000 standard pallets, leaving around 3,000 spare half height locations for stacking cartons or low pallets by the ground floor pick spaces.
Four mezzanine floors have been built, with an average area of 35,000 sq ft (3,158.7 sq m), each with conveyor and pallet lift access from the ground floor as well as between each of the mezzanine decks. The mezzanines are suitable for sortation, rework, and fulfilment services required for the company’s growing e-commerce activities and online retail logistics business.
Access to the warehouse is through 18 loading docks plus a separate drive-in ramp at one end and an extra wide door at the other for out-of-gauge freight, which sits under a large canopy where doubledecker pallet trailers can also be loaded.
The site has been fully secured with palisade fencing and barriers controlling vehicle arrivals and departures.
The Central Park Logistics site is located on the edge of Avonmouth, within a 10 minute drive of the company’s other premises at Western Freight Terminal. The new DC will shortly benefit from direct motorway access due to the new junction currently under construction on the M49, improving access to the major M4 and M5 motorway networks that connect Avonmouth to London and the rest of the country, as well as the Midlands, Wales and the South West.
Davies Turner Plc Chairman, Philip Stephenson said: “Our Bristol regional HQ which also houses Davies Turner Air Cargo, has had outstanding success and is expanding rapidly in co-operation with our European partners plus the main existing and emerging markets worldwide.
“The company already operates other warehouses nearby, with each site delivering complementary supply chain solutions.
“This cluster-based approach based on our freehold sites will allow us to pool our local management and labour resources. It represents a much-needed expansion of capacity serving our customers nationwide as well as in South Wales and the West Country.”
Bristol is one of Davies Turner’s key multimodal freight hubs, with satellite branches in Bridgend, Plymouth and Southampton. The region also works with the rest of the company’s network centred on its RDCs at Birmingham, Dartford, Heathrow, Manchester and Cumbernauld in Scotland, as well as Dublin in Ireland – with another 14 smaller branches supporting them.
The company has also bought enough land (12 acres (5 ha) at Central Park to develop a second warehouse on the same site capable of adding at least another 121,000 sq ft (11,250 sq m) as business expands again, following the pattern set at its other regional distribution centres.
