Europe’s largest and most technically advanced parcel sorting hub was officially opened by DPD last Thursday.
The giant new £100m hub, which can sort 720,000 parcels per night came in on time and budget and will be fully in operation for this year’s Black Friday and Christmas Peak period.
It brings 1000 new, full-time jobs in Hinckley with positions including; deck hands, parcel loaders, management, vehicle maintenance, HGV mechanics, security, admin and IT.
The new hub is built on a 33 acre site close to J1 of the M69. It’s 470 metres long and 40 metres wide with 264 loading dock doors. The build phase involved 250,000 tonnes of earth moved to prepare the site, 4,500 tonnes of steelwork and 75,000 tonnes of concrete. The hub contains a 3,000 metre long automated sorter, designed by conveyer specialists Beumer.
Dwain McDonald, DPD’s CEO, commented; “The superhub is way beyond anything else in the UK and gives us significant scope to expand in the next few years. We’ve been consistently investing in our network and growing our capacity for some time now to ensure we stay well ahead of the increasing demand for DPD’s services. We’ve also opened around 20 new depots in the UK in the last two years, half of them being brand new purpose-built developments. But Hinckley is the clearest signal yet of our intent.
