In 2022, we delivered no fewer than eight new industrial units at award-winning Magna Park Lutterworth, Europe’s largest dedicated logistics and distribution park.
Everything about Magna Park Lutterworth is on an epic scale. A former airfield in Leicestershire, it covers 550 acres, making it the biggest site of its kind not just in Britain, but in Europe. In total, it provides over 11 million square feet (1 million m2) of floor space across 41 buildings, and is home to household names including Toyota, BT, Asda Walmart, Disney, DHL and Britvic. Its success lies in its position in an area known as the ‘Golden Triangle’: bounded by the M1, M6 and M69 motorways, this part of the Midlands is widely regarded as Europe’s premier location for logistics and distribution operations.
Magna Park Lutterworth is owned and managed by investor /developer GLP Europe. Over the past 15 years, the company has created similar sites across the UK including Nottingham, Manchester, Basingstoke, Peterborough and Crawley.
“We’d previously worked on GLP’s Magna Park in Milton Keynes for our long-standing client McLaren,” says contracts manager Nick Harris. “That’s a single, condensed site, whereas Lutterworth is split into two – Magna Park North (MPN) and Magna Park South (MPS) – which are about a mile and half apart.“
At Lutterworth we’re working on behalf of another client, TSL. “We worked with them on the LIDL Regional Distribution Centre (RDC) in Belvedere, Kent, in 2021. That was a very different, and difficult job, but when they approached us about this we thought, ‘yes, let’s give it a go’,” says Nick.
The initial contract was for three units at Magna Park North, to which TSL quickly added a fourth. The first three units are now all occupied, with MPN4 in the process of being fitted out. We’re currently undertaking groundworks on four more units at Magna Park South, with negotiations for another three – a grand total of 11.
The eight units we’ve completed or begun to date range from 250,000 to 750,000 square feet, giving a total of more than 2.3 million square feet of warehousing space. The numbers involved in the groundworks package, which doesn’t include slabs, are equally impressive.
The whole package, which lasts 58 weeks and is valued at more than £20 million, needs a big team to deliver. We’ve got 90 people on site, some of whom worked Leicester City FC’s new training ground, which is half an hour up the M1.“
The scale and speed of this project make it very special. “There are big numbers involved, and it’s a great project!” says Nick.
