DPD has announced it is investing £150 million in a new super-hub at Hinckley. This will be just down the road from the DPD Hub 4 and International Gateway that were both opened in 2015.

The new super-hub will increase the total overnight capacity of DPD in the UK by 60%. It will be 503 metres long and have 276,000 square feet of space, and will be able to handle 71,000 parcels an hour.

Dwain McDonald, DPD’s chief executive said: “We are continuing to experience strong growth in demand for our services, which is why we are announcing another massive hub project less than three years after we opened hub 4. In that time, we have seen seismic changes in retail behaviour in the UK, with major events like Black Friday creating bigger and longer periods of high demand at different times during the year, and then Christmas itself becoming even more of an online retail focused event.”

The new DPD development is part of an 82 acre employment park that is close to J1 of the M69. It is being set up by IM Properties that has just received planning permission from the local Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council.

Plans are for the ground to be opened in October of this year and the site to be fully operational by the peak season of 2020.

McDonald said: “We have invested hugely in our infrastructure nationwide over the last six years, moving our older depots to brand new, larger and purpose-built facilities or upgrading them to state-of-the-art 60,000 sq ft distribution centres. And by 2020 we will have built three of the largest overnight sorting hubs in Europe. That level of unprecedented investment is what ensures we stay ahead of the chasing pack and gives us the capacity to support our retail customers for many years to come.”