Ocado expands to Oxfordshire

Ocado has snapped up the last available speculatively built warehouse at Tritax Symmetry’s 53-acre Symmetry Park, Bicester scheme in Oxfordshire.

The online retailer has taken Unit B, comprising 163,664 sq ft on a 20-year lease. The facility will be one of the most advanced in the world with high tech robotics and will create around 900 jobs with an investment of c. £50 million to the local economy.

Once operational in 2022, it will be used to further improve its distribution across Oxfordshire for the rapidly growing online grocery customer base.

Danny Kennedy, Senior Real Estate Program Manager at Ocado said “Our operations from this site will create 900 jobs for local people and contribute £50m to the local economy, as well as serving a growing customer base in the region. We’ve seen a huge demand for our services this year and we’re pleased to be able to expand our operations to serve tens of thousands more customers from this site in Symmetry Park.”

Speaking about the letting, Tom Leeming, development director at Tritax Symmetry, commented: “As the significant growth in online retail continues, demand for prime, strategically located logistics facilities continues to strengthen across the UK. Local Authorities, by consenting to logistics land use, can play an important role in helping to drive the regional economic recovery.”

Symmetry Park, Bicester has planning consent in place on additional land, which can be built out as one unit (c. 270,000 sq ft) or alternatively as two smaller units (170,000 & 90,000 sq ft) subject to tenant interest.

Earlier this week, Tritax Symmetry announced the next phase of development at MA6NITUDE in Middlewich, Cheshire.  With detailed planning consent already in place, two warehouse / distribution facilities comprising 149,000 sq ft and 41,000 sq ft will be built on a speculative basis with work due to start in in Q1 next year.

DTRE and Savills are joint letting agents for the scheme. Gerald Eve represented Ocado.

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