John Lewis was in an existing 650,000-square-foot unit on G Park, Milton Keynes. Cushman & Wakefield was appointed to negotiate the acquisition of an additional 670,000 square feet that had to be no more than 100 meters (about 1,076 feet) away from the first unit as they needed to be joined by a conveyor belt link that will be constructed 8 meters (about 86 feet) above the combined yard areas.
The acquisition is a key part of Program Q, the Partnership's biggest ever Supply Chain and Systems transformation project that involves significant redundancies and future property disposals. With planning consent secured, construction will commence on site in summer 2013, and practical completion of the base building is due September next year. A total of 450 new jobs will be created.
Online sales at John Lewis have passed the $1.5-billion mark on a rolling 52-week basis, alongside a successful launch of a new multi-million-pound web platform. The milestone comes a year ahead of the retailer's forecast, which had estimated reaching $1.5 billion of sales in 2014. This has led to the additional investment in their E-Commerce Fulfillment Platform, which runs exclusively from Milton Keynes.