DPD UK has announced that its new £150m parcel hub in Hinckley, Leicestershire is set to be fully operational as part of its plans for a record-breaking holiday season.
The new hub is DPD’s fifth in the UK. According to the company it is the largest fully automated domestic parcel hub in Europe. The company also reported the facility is the company’s most eco-friendly and technologically advanced hub to-date.
Hub 5 features a Solar PV system with over 6,000 panels, providing an output of 2.4 MW. The power generated by the system will enable the hub offices to operate off grid during daytime working hours with the excess power exported back to the national grid to supply green energy.
The new hub is located close to J1 of the M69, just 2 miles from two other key DPD sites in the area; Hub 4 and the firm’s International Gateway, both of which opened in Sketchley in 2015.
The main hub building is over 500 m long, 42 m wide and occupies a 40 acre site. The company hopes that the facility’s 3,000 m of conveyor will enable the hub team to sort 72,000 parcels per hour.
According to the company, it will be DPD UK’s most technologically advanced hub to date with over 300 security cameras and the very latest sortation technology with optical character recognition software and video coding to automatically scan address information.
Chief Operating Officer at DPD UK Justin Pegg commented:
“To have Hub 5 open and fully operational going into the Black Friday and Christmas period is fantastic news for the operation and for our customers. Our giant hubs in Hinckley and those in the West Midlands give us the capacity and the flexibility we need to manage the significant volume and the major peaks at this time of year. We are planning for record parcel volumes again this Christmas and we have been able to prepare for those volumes with Hub 5 in mind.
With Hub 5 we now have three of the largest fully automated parcel hubs in Europe. Over the last ten years we’ve invested in growing our network capacity, not only with the new hubs but also with close to 40 purpose-built, brand new regional distribution centres, giving us the most efficient parcel operation in the UK.”
Source: DPD
