Aldi has made the first delivery from its new warehouse in Bardon in Leicestershire, marking the start of the first phase of operations at Britain’s largest distribution centre.
The £500m facility, which measures 1.3 million square feet, will employ over 1,000 staff, once fully operational, and is part of Aldi’s expansion drive in the UK, which includes growing its footprint from 1,000 to 1,500 stores.
The site is designed to improve efficiency, reduce supply chain costs, and strengthen logistics capacity in line with its growth.
Bardon will serve nearly 350 stores across the UK and have the capacity to handle nearly seven million pallets of stock a year.
It will also serve as a national replenishment hub, supporting Aldi’s existing warehouse network.
The distribution centre is made up of five linked buildings, including four ambient and six temperature-controlled chambers for chilled and frozen products.
The building has 100 HGV bays at the front, and 40 at the rear. It is also the lowest carbon density warehouse across the Aldi South Group, with 19,000 solar panels installed on the roof.
Aldi has been working with technology partners Dematic and Cimcorp to install automated storage systems at Bardon, which includes machinery that will unpack deliveries from suppliers and store cases of products in floor-to-ceiling racking until it is ready to be delivered to stores.
The retailer is now on a recruitment drive and plans to employ over 1,000 staff at the site. However this will include staff from Aldi’s sites at Sawley in Derbyshire, and Atherstone in Warwickshire, which have both been closed down and replaced by the Bardon site.
Giles Hurley, Aldi UK and Ireland chief executive, said: “The state-of-the-art technology in Bardon will significantly increase the efficiency of our warehouse network, meaning we can continue to deliver the best possible prices for our customers, every single day.
“Our ambition is to make quality groceries affordable and accessible to all, and that can only happen when everybody in Britain has an Aldi store on their doorstep.
“That’s why we’re committing significant investment in opening new stores and distribution centres up and down the country, taking us closer to our goal of having 1,500 stores across the UK.”
