UK Mail chooses former Peugeot factory site for its new hub

POSTAL delivery firm UK Mail is to move to a new 200,000 sq ft premises on the former Peugeot car factory site in Coventry after being forced out of its Birmingham base by an HS2-linked compulsory purchase order.

It is to move into its new headquarters at Ryton – now part of Solihull-based ‘big shed’ developer Prologis’s Prologis Park Ryton scheme – next year.

TheBusinessDesk.com revealed in early December that UK Mail was leaving its Bromford base in Birmingham and re-locating to Coventry because the site is on the proposed HS2 high-speed rail route and a compulsory purchase order had been served by the Government.

All 450 workers at UK Mail are being offered new jobs at Ryton but it may be impractical for some of them to take on a job 20 miles away from where they live.

UK Mail chief executive Guy Buswell was quoted in the Coventry Telegraph newspaper admitting the move was “not ideal”.

He said: “We have looked at other sites in the area and we would have preferred to move somewhere nearer but we couldn’t find anywhere suitable.”

In October Network Rail officially opened its new 300,000 distribution centre at the same site in Ryton.