DPD opens £12m extension at UK parcel sorting superhub
Express delivery company DPD has officially opened a new £12m extension to one of its two parcel-sorting “superhubs” in the UK. Yesterday saw World Cup footballing legends Sir Geoff Hurst and Sir Gordon Banks unveiling a plaque to mark the opening of the addition to the 27-acre facility in Oldbury.
Featuring state-of-the-art technology, the extension will increase the site’s parcel sorting capacity to more than 500,000 per night.
Some 12 months in the pipeline, it has also created 150 new jobs.
Dwain McDonald, CEO of DPD, said: “It’s wonderful in the current climate to have the opportunity to recruit people to our growing business – a team which is customer-focussed and aiming for market leadership by 2015.
“The Oldbury hub will help accommodate the vast volumes of International business that we handle.”
Self-contained
Pictured marking the official opening are (left to right): Sir Geoff Hurst MBE, Gordon Banks OBE and DPD’s CEO, Dwain McDonald
DPD, which is part of La Poste subsidiary GeoPost, has a network in the UK including 40 depots and another superhub at Smethwick, along with the Oldbury facility.
The Oldbury superhub connects directly with 23 European countries each night.
In the event of severe weather or local infrastructure problems, it can draw on its own power supply, fuel, road-gritting systems and snow ploughs, as well as a dedicated IT system, in order to maintain constant operations.
The new international sorting area includes secure x-ray screening facilities for air freight and a £900,000 Vitronic optical scanning recognition system to improve first-time read rates and routing accuracy.
McDonald said DPD is seeing its business growing in all areas, not just international packages.
He said: “Our unique Predict service, which offers customers a one hour delivery window, has produced £40 million of new business wins this year as customers switch to DPD from carriers who cannot provide this award-winning service.”
