St. Modwen lets 150,000 sq ft Avonmouth unit to Ocado Retail

St. Modwen has signed an agreement for lease with Ocado Retail, the UK’s largest dedicated online grocery retailer, at one of its anchor schemes, St. Modwen Park Access 18 in Avonmouth, Bristol.

Ocado Retail has agreed a 17-year lease on a 150,000 sq ft speculatively-built unit which will act as the company’s first ‘mini’ Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC), and is expected to support around 815 jobs in the local area. Ocado Retail will occupy a high-quality, well-located and flexible space – with the layout of the unit allowing for two additional mezzanine floors.

Peter Davies, Development Director at St. Modwen Industrial & Logistics, said:

“Securing a customer of this nature is testament to the quality of our scheme, its prime location and confirms our commitment to speculatively build-out sites where appropriate. Across our parks, we’re able to cater to both leading national occupiers as well as small-to-medium-sized industrial and logistics businesses. Ocado Retail is a strong addition to our growing list of high-quality customers and the company’s developing offering in the South West will bring significant investment in the regional economy and support hundreds of new jobs.”

Richard Locke, Operations Director at Ocado Retail Limited, added:

“Our new Avonmouth home will support the growth plans of Ocado Retail, a joint venture between Ocado and M&S, allowing us to bring ever better service to customers in Bristol and the surrounding area. St. Modwen’s well-located site was the ideal space for us to expand our retail offering and we look forward to operating from Access 18 in 2020.”

The unit will act as a Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) for Ocado – its sixth in the UK but also its first ‘mini-CFC’. Once live, the facility will be able to process more than 30,000 orders per week and despite its smaller size, the centre is expected to achieve productivity rates that will drive forward Ocado’s market-leading growth plans. Once delivered by St. Modwen, the fulfilment centre is expected to be fully operational at the end of 2020.

More than 1m sq ft of industrial and logistics space has been delivered at St. Modwen Park Access 18 to date, which already accommodates 16 different businesses including global courier and delivery service Hermes Parcelnet Ltd, catering equipment providers Nisbets PLC, and leading healthcare distributor Movianto.

The scheme is home to the South West’s largest speculative industrial and logistics unit and forms part of St. Modwen’s largest-ever committed industrial and logistics pipeline, standing at 1.6m sq ft nationally. Mature landscaping provides an established environment for staff to work in, while cycle paths and footways link to nearby residential areas. A bus service also runs adjacent to the site.

St. Modwen Park Access 18 is located on Avonmouth Way and Kings Weston Lane, with direct access to the M5/M49 Junctions 18/18A. The Avonmouth Docks are also within 1 mile of the site and Bristol City Centre is just 10 miles east of the scheme.

Alder King and Knight Frank are joint agents on the development.

For more information, click here.