Britain John Lewis Partnership has announced that it has signed a deal to lease a 1 million square foot distribution centre from supermarket group Tesco to help meet growing online
demand, with the creation of 500 jobs. Digital now accounts for more than half of the department store chain’s total sales, increasing from 40% to over 60% during the pandemic.
Keeping this rising demand for online sales in mind, John Lewis plans to start operating the warehouse, which is under an 11 year lease, during summer 2022. The group plans to invest 50
million pounds ($69 million) in the department stores online operation in 2021 and a further more than 100 million pounds in online growth over the course of its five-year strategy.
While in March the brand has announced that it has permanently closed eight of its existing stores, hitting 1,465 jobs. Now, the brand is clearly focusing on its online sales. The brand
further mentioned that this new site will become John Lewis’ second-largest distribution centre, and it so far has ten of them for online home delivery and shop orders.
Andrew Murphy, executive director of operations for John Lewis Partnership talking about this new space mentioned, “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”.
