Northampton

Whistl has taken leases on 450,000sq ft of warehouse space to meet the growing demand for its fulfilment and contact centres.

The company has taken 300,000sq ft at Belkin House, Express Business Park, expanding its existing Rushden fulfilment capability and is opening its fifth fulfilment centre, located in Unit 3 Northampton GPark.

The site at Moulton Park Industrial Estate, Northampton (pictured) was chosen because of its ‘Golden Triangle’ location, said to be the biggest concentration of major logistics and distribution operations in Europe.

It has good access to the M1, M40, M6 and M40 putting 90% of the population of England and Wales within reach in four hours.

This allows Whistl to potentially offer online retailers a later cut off time for their customers' orders for next day delivery.

The 155,000sq ft purpose-built depot will be fitted out to enable pick and pack of customer orders. The site has parking for 27 HGVs and has 15 dock doors and three level access points.

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Alongside its expanding pick and pack and returns warehouse capability, Whistl has expanded into contact centres and providing warehouse and carrier management systems with easy integration or plug-in to retailer’s existing IT or order management systems.

Northampton and the expanded Rushton site join Whistl’s other fulfilment centres located in Farnborough and Gateshead giving it over 700,000 sq ft fulfilment capacity across the UK.

Whistl entered the e-commerce fulfilment and contact centres market through the acquisition of Prism DM in 2017 and expanded its presence the following year by the acquisition of Spark Response and Spark Etail.

The company confirmed it is quickly building its presence in fulfilment, working with companies including fast-growing online retailers Brand Alley, Sports Pursuit, Shark Ninja and Microscooters.

The £650m turnover company is targeting medium sized B2C and B2B retailers with a single account managed end to end fulfilment solution.

Research shows 50% of the UK’s £80bn annual retail purchases require fulfilment and that the e-fulfilment market is worth £11lbn and has experienced a 15% year-on-year growth rate in the past five years.

Whistl chief executive Nick Wells said: “Through Whistl Fulfilment we are bringing our people, our operational excellence and reputation for first class customer management to medium sized retailers who require an agile and scalable partner who can manage every aspect of the fulfilment process from placing an order to delivery to the consumer. We have a range of proven flexible and customisable services available depending on the requirements of the retailer.

“We understand that fulfilment and delivery is part of the brand experience for consumers and everyone within the company is passionate about doing the best we can to ensure that we deliver on the retailers brand promise.”

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