Barely five months after opening a second distribution centre in Utrecht, app only supermarket Picnic is already expanding. In Utrecht Lage Weide, it has started building a 35,000-square-metre distribution centre.
Picnic currently processes its orders at two distribution centres in Nijkerk and Utrecht. In the past six months, Picnic expanded its services from six to 24 cities, doubling the online supermarket's customer base to 65,000. The company says it is on course to record a turnover of 100 million euros this year, and to accommodate this growth, construction of a third distribution centre started yesterday. The building will be commissioned in March 2018. The new distribution centre will create five hundred to one thousand jobs.
See also: Video: Picnic shows construction of new distribution centre
Sustainability measures
Sustainability is an important pillar for Picnic, so too with the construction of the new logistics centre. The roof will have 20,000 square metres of solar panels, which will provide much of the power needs of the web supermarket. The heat generated by the cold storage engines will be reused in the offices through a heat exchange system. As a result of these sustainability measures, the building will receive the sustainability certificate 'BREEAM Excellent'
Nationwide coverage
Picnic's expansion drive does not stop there. It recently raised 100 million euros during an investment round. With this money, Picnic wants to achieve national coverage in the next three years. To do so, it still needs two large distribution centres and a large number of local hubs. Picnic will drive around with 2,000 electric delivery cars by then. Currently, the online super uses 'only' 250 delivery vans. According to co-founder Michiel Muller, Picnic will employ around 10,000 people in three years, compared to around 1,000 now.
Editorial LogistiekProfs
