Wiggle signs lease on huge warehouse near Wolverhampton

Online retailer Wiggle is set to move its warehouse operations out of Portsmouth after signing a lease on a 323,000 square foot unit at a logistics facility at Bilston near Wolverhampton.

The new location – more than four times the size of a football pitch – is at Citadel Logistics Centre and as well as bringing its warehousing facilities together at one location will also help the business, now selling to more than 1 million customers in 70 countries worldwide, continue its growth, reports Logisticsmanager.com.

The retailer’s operations and programme director, Nicholas Pink, said: “The move demonstrates Wiggle’s continuous growth and ambition. We believe the location and space of the new warehouse will provide a competitive advantage as we scale up our operations in the UK and overseas.”

Wiggle’s origins lie in a bike shop in Portsmouth, where it currently has a total of 95,000 square feet of warehousing space across a number of sites, but last month it said that it needed to look elsewhere for its new facility given the lack of suitable sites in the south coast city.

Reports last month suggested that moving the warehouse operations may result in up to 100 redundancies in Portsmouth, but the company has said that none would happen until 2015, and it will also look to relocate staff.

Wiggle will however keep its core operations there, with Pink saying: "Whilst it will be sad to leave Portsmouth, our Head Office and other functions will remain and develop in Portsmouth."

The Wolverhampton site has good motorway links, located six miles from junction 1 of the M5 and 10 miles from junction 10 of the M6. The site is owned and operated by Goodman UK Logistics.

In April this year, Wiggle revealed that it was setting up repair and servicing centres at several business parks operated by Goodman, aiming to provide face-to-face customer service alongside to its online offer. Initially rolled out to three locations, more are likely to follow.

Charles Crossland, managing director of Goodman UK Logistics, commented: “We’re delighted to welcome Wiggle to Citadel, which demonstrates Goodman’s ability to respond quickly to the needs of our customers.

“Good quality sites like Citadel are able to boost the local economy by attracting major businesses like Wiggle and in turn creating new employment opportunities.

“This deal also highlights the demand for quality logistics space in this part of the UK, with strong customer take-up reflecting the diminishing supply of prime, well located facilities, such as Citadel,” he added.

We’ve asked Wiggle how the move is likely to affect customers, including the answer to the all-important question we imagine many of may have – will there still be Haribo? We’ll let you know their response once we get it.