Out of Town: Birch Coppice Business Park

IT’S a trip along the M42 to north Warwickshire for ‘Out of Town’ this month with a guided tour of a business park built on the site of a former colliery.

WHEN Ocado completed the deal on a new distribution centre on Birch Coppice Business Park, it brought to an end over 12 months of negotiations between the online grocer and IM Properties.

The firm, founded in 1987 and part of the interests of entrepreneur Robert Edmiston, had successfully negotiated the sale of a 35-acre plot for a rumoured £17m and on which Bowmer and Kirkland and Kirkland is now building a 575,000 sq ft distribution centre for the retailer.

Ocado could have gone anywhere to open its second so-called ‘customer fulfilment centre’, expected to create around 2,000 jobs, but it chose the base near Tamworth for a reason.

“They liked the quality of the environment, they liked where it sat geographically and its prominence to the motorway,” said Kevin Ashfield, development manager for IM Properties.

“It suited where they were looking geographically to get greater expansion as a company. It ticked a number of boxes plus it was deliverable – we had planning, which is quite rare these days from a developer, and we had the money to put the infrastructure in.

“We talked to one or two occupiers but really Ocado was the main contender. Coming through the financial turmoil that we’ve been through, I think it’s fantastic. It’s probably one of the biggest land deals that’s been done for some time. They’re looking at spending something in the region of £210m on their facility.”

The estate has an interesting history. In March 1987, 1,500 staff walked out of UK Coal’s Birch Coppice Colliery for the final time after which a decade of inactivity passed before IM Properties bought the 400-acre land mass in 1997.

It set about developing a new hub aimed predominantly at logistics operators, with massive warehouses a stone’s throw away from the M42. The first ever occupier was the Volkswagen Group, which created 400 jobs alone when it opened a logistics centre after completing the site’s first deal in 2000.

Most of the 280-acre Phase 1 is now occupied – tenants include DHL, Severn Trent and Euro Car Parts – with just two plots remaining of 47,500 sq ft and 135,000 sq ft respectively.

Work is on going to prepare the unoccupied parts of Phase 2 so that design and build negotiations can continue on the available plots of 400,000 sq ft and 700,000 sq ft.

Around 2,500 staff currently work on the estate but it is estimated 5,000 people will call Birch Coppice the office once it is fully occupied.

IM invested £25m in preparing Phase 1 followed by a further £15m doing likewise with Phase 2, on which outline consent has been granted on two million sq ft.

Around 18,000 tonnes of contaminated material was removed while doing the Phase 1 ground works and 45,000 trees were planted, part of a £750,000 outlay on landscaping alone.

IM, which is headquartered in Warwick, has used its own cash reserves to prepare plots and put them through the costly planning process so when potential suitors are shown around, the job is already half done.

Mr Ashfield, left, said: “We were committed to doing this infrastructure work, no matter what, which a lot of people wouldn’t have done.

“But we took the view that this was our advantage and our competitors possibly couldn’t afford to put infrastructure in speculatively into their schemes.

“The design and build market is such now that you get an enquiry and they want you to show you’ve already got planning and the site is ready to go, not that it’s a field you haven’t even put a spade in or there’s no services.

“There was a period where people built speculative warehouses because there was plenty of money around whereas now demand isn’t as strong. Some are arguing the on spec market will come back but I think it will be a while before it does.”

Pic: Aerial view of Birch Coppice Business Park with the undeveloped Phase 2 in the foreground.