Charles Bentley in £6m warehouse deal
Charles Bentley & Son has bought the 202,000 sq ft former Morris Cranes warehouse in Loughborough in a deal worth £6m, for its e-commerce brand, BuyDirect4U.
BuyDirect4U was established in 2005 as an online retailer sourcing home, garden and leisure products, selling directly online to customers in the UK and Europe under the Bentley brand name.
The company achieved a online sales increase of 68 per cent in 2014 and has surpassed this for 2015.
General manager Andrew Steel said: “The move to our new warehouse has been one of our most ambitious projects to date, but it will allow us to create a more efficient pick, pack and ship operation.
“We have spent the last three months transforming the site, which was originally built for Morris Cranes, from a shell into a dedicated storage and dispatch facility. The warehouse has now been completely refitted and we have installed new FM2 Special flooring that is necessary for modern equipment working at the heights and speeds that are required in our rapidly expanding ecommerce business.
The finance for the purchase of the new warehouse on North Road in Loughborough was provided by NatWest.
BuyDirect4U now has a team of 30 staff in its online sales department, working in conjunction with the Bentley head office, and sells more than 1,000 different products through its website.
Morris now operates under the Konecranes brand in the UK, following a merger in 2009.