M&S to create 300 jobs in Bradford
Work has begun to extend M&S’s Bradford distribution centre so it becomes a second online warehouse for M&S.com, while creating 300 new jobs in the local community this year.
The investment is part of the retailer’s fast-moving ‘Never the Same Again’ programme. The reengineering of M&S’s supply chain, including the extension of the centre at Bradford to permanently improve online capacity, is an important enabler to M&S’s MS2 division.
Under MS2, M&S is setting itself up to best digitally serve shoppers in the future, including reflecting the shift to online shopping driven by the pandemic, which saw the retailers online sales increase by over a third (+34%) in the first half of the financial year, while app downloads in 2020 were up over 200%.
M&S opened its Bradford distribution centre in 2010 – a carbon neutral building which achieved BREEAM “excellent”, with the site currently delivering both food and clothing to stores in partnership with logistics experts XPO. This new investment is utilising existing vacant space within the centre to create a new online warehouse for M&S.com, supporting the retailer’s Castle Donington online warehouse which opened in 2012 and in-store pick model.
The investment in Bradford follows a successful trial over Christmas where Bradford’s colleagues manually picked product from the existing automated distribution centre to service online orders – at its peak, the site was dispatching 14,000 items a day.
Extension works at M&S’s Bradford Distribution Centre are underway.
The site was selected for this investment as a result of its location, excess space and because it is M&S’s most automated distribution centre, which has what it describes as “a great engineering team” already on site.
Whilst what’s being built is an automated system, the extension to Bradford is expected to create around 300 roles, as product is picked off the automation, with further details expected to be announced over summer.
Sarah Monk, programme manager for the Bradford project said: “Warehouse colleagues have been our behind the scenes heroes during the pandemic – making sure customers’ parcels are picked, packed & shipped – safely & efficiently. The team at Braford did an amazing job supporting with online Christmas orders and we’re all so excited that we’ll now be permanently running an online operation from the site which will include the recruitment of 300 new XPO colleagues.”
Stephen Langford, director of M&S.com said, “We’re transforming our clothing business to be more relevant, more often for our 22 million customers – however they choose to shop. Whilst it’s exciting our stores have reopened, growing our online business has never been more important and part of that is a behind the scenes network which means we can serve our customers as efficiently as possible. Building Bradford is a key way we’re setting ourselves up for a more digital future at M&S under the banner of MS2.”
