Marks and Spencer to increase online capacity with automated warehouse

High street retailer Marks and Spencer is permanently increasing its online capacity by building a new automated online warehouse within its Bradford distribution centre. 

In a statement, Marks and Spencer confirmed that work had begun to extend its Bradford distribution centre to become its second online warehouse for M&S.com.

The new automated warehouse will be used for boxed products, from bras to belts, and the aim is for it to eventually support around 20 percent of M&S online orders.

The retailer is aiming for the online warehouse to be operational for Christmas 2021, when the team will be tasked with dispatching 35,000 items a day, with capacity set to be increased over time. 

The move will create around 300 new jobs in the local community later this year, added the retailer.

Marks and Spencer’s Bradford distribution centre currently delivers both clothing and food to its stores in partnership with logistics experts XPO, and this new investment is utilising existing vacant space within the centre to create a new online warehouse for M&S.com, supporting the retailer’s Castle Donington online warehouse and in-store pick model.

The investment in Bradford follows a successful trial over Christmas where Bradford’s colleagues manually picked product from the existing automated distribution centre to service online orders, at its peak, the site was dispatching 14,000 items a day.


Stephen Langford, director of M&S.com said in a statement: “We’re transforming our clothing business to be more relevant, more often for our 22 million customers – however they choose to shop. 


“Whilst it’s exciting our stores have reopened, growing our online business has never been more important and part of that is a behind the scenes network which means we can serve our customers as efficiently as possible. Building Bradford is a key way we’re setting ourselves up for a more digital future at M&S under the banner of MS2.”


The move is part of reengineering Marks and Spencer’s supply chain, under the MS2 division, which was set up to help the retailer turbocharging online growth by setting itself up to “best digitally serve shoppers in the future”.


The pandemic has seen a shift to online shopping, with Marks and Spencer reporting that online sales grew by 34 percent in the first half of the financial year, with app downloads in 2020 up by more than 200 percent and Sparks members now at over 10 million.