The background
Over recent years, the nature of postage and parcel services has changed drastically, with fewer letters being sent and a huge increase in the number of parcels. Long-term Prologis customer, Royal Mail, is at the heart of this change and recognised the need to adapt its operations accordingly.
With operational facilities at various Prologis Parks across the UK, Royal Mail was looking for an experienced project partner it could trust to provide a bespoke, build-to-suit solution for its new Midlands Super Hub, which could house cutting-edge automation systems and accommodate extremely high parcel throughput. The location of this hub was key to the brief, as was the need for the development partner to be highly flexible during what was to be an ambitious and complex project.
Following a competitive tender process in 2019, Prologis UK’s offer at DIRFT, its financial strength, expertise and track record in delivering complex build-to-suit schemes led to it being chosen to be Royal Mail’s trusted development partner.
The result? An 840,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art fully automated distribution centre, a separate Vehicle Service Centre and dedicated rail connection to the West Coast Mainline, located at DIRFT in Northamptonshire, the leading road/rail intermodal logistics site in the UK.
Fast forward over two years and now complete, the Royal Mail’s Midlands Super Hub handles 40% of the UK’s total parcel volume and is capable of processing 60,000 parcels per hour, with each package taking only seven minutes to process.
A lesson in flexibility
The Royal Mail Midlands Super Hub at DIRFT is the result of close collaboration between all project partners and a willingness to embrace flexibility, right from day one. The building’s specification and Royal Mail’s requirements evolved throughout the design process, with the project team at Prologis offering flexibility in regard to the capacity of the plot, infrastructure at DIRFT and what Royal Mail needed to achieve for its internal forecasting and future growth planning.
A scheme of this scale and complexity meant it needed extremely close-knit collaboration between all parties and project teams. This was delivered through tight integration of operations teams, engineers, lawyers, commercial teams and contractors that enabled the project to progress on time and on budget.
The final product
Royal Mail’s Midlands Super Hub is an impressive and significant facility and one of the most sophisticated parcel hubs in the UK. Both the volume of parcels that flow through this pivotal facility and the level of automation installed in the building make it a leader in its field.
As a forward-thinking employer, Royal Mail was one of the first companies to request a roof terrace to increase employee amenity space as part of the building specification, which Prologis built into the final design.
Paul Bridson, Real Estate Director at Royal Mail, said: “The Midlands Super Hub is critical to our entire UK operations. We had to get the building right and deliver on time; 40% of Royal Mail’s traffic travels through this building every day.
“We needed the right partner and Prologis UK was the ideal fit for this significant project. From the outset the team was flexible, reliable and capable of delivering what they said they would.
Initially, we needed to ensure the building was the optimum size for our future operational requirements and Prologis supported us throughout this decision-making process with designs and plans to meet our ever need. Despite the challenges this presented for the Prologis project team, they understood the complexities of the decision and found ways of giving us choice and flexibility while our final decision was reached. Their experience of dealing with complex projects like ours shone through. They offered solutions and suggestions that made us feel that they were genuinely interested in delivering the right facility for our needs – rather than simply focusing on what was good for them.
“The collaborative approach succeeded – Prologis was the right partner. They did what they said they would do - the building was completed on time, is now fully operational and it is the jewel in the crown in terms of our real estate and the functionality it provides. We have a wider relationship with Prologis and when it comes to important development projects we would not hesitate to actively seek them as a partner of choice in future.”