Discount Retail Chain Lidl Spain (owned by the German Schwarz Gruppe) has acquired a landplot of about 150,000 m2 in the Madrid town of Parla to build a new warehouse and thereby consolidate the Community of Madrid as its main logistics node at the national level. The project will involve an investment of € 85 million (US$103million) and is part of the group's commitment to continue growing steadily in Spain and, especially, in the central area. Thus, Lidl will intensify its logistics activity in a region where today it already has two warehouses in Alcalá de Henares and Pinto, with a surface area of more than 90,000 m2.
The Alcalá de Henares center was inaugurated in 2016 and with an initial surface of 45,000 m2. Two years later, it expanded these facilities with the start-up of a silo for automated merchandise management. After a total investment of more than € 92 million (US$111million), the platform currently has a surface area of 61,000 m2, a storage capacity of 71,000 pallets, and serves Lidl stores in the Community of Madrid and other areas of the center of the country. In fact, the Alcalá de Henares platform is, today, one of the largest, technologically advanced and sustainable logistics centers of the Lidl Group in the world. In addition, the chain also has a logistics warehouse in Pinto, from which it currently manages a significant part of its ecommerce business for the online sale of its own private label brands in&out articles. The center has an area of 30,000 m2.
Not surprisingly, in recent years the Community of Madrid has become one of the main focuses of Lidl's expansion in the country, where it already has a network of more than 70 stores. During the 2020 financial year, eight stores were launched in this community, including its 600 store in Spain (in Tres Cantos, last February) and a new point of sale in the emblematic Tetuán Market. In total, the chain invested more than € 46 million (US$56million) in these projects and created more than 130 jobs. According to the regional director of expansion of Lidl in Spain.
Other logistics developments
Outside Madrid, the expansion of the discount chain also continues, also accompanied by a strengthening of its logistics structure. Thus, in these first months of the year, Lidl will launch the new platform that it has rented in Sant Estreve Sesrovires (Barcelona), which will have a total area of 27,500 m2, an interior height of up to 12 m and 32 loading docks. From this center, which will be managed by the logistics operator Naeko, agri-food products will be distributed both to Spanish supermarkets and to other stores that the group has in Europe. Along with this project in Barcelona, Lidl is also immersed in the construction of a new warehouse in Nanclares de la Oca (Álava) and, soon, another in Escúzar (Granada), where it has acquired a plot of 130,000 m2. In Nanclares de la Oca it will build what will be its reference logistics warehouse in northern Spain, built on a plot of more than 111,000 m2 and which could be operational by the end of this year.
Further, the discount chain launched a new logistics center in Cheste (Valencia) at the end of 2019 and in mid-2020 it opened another in Agüimes (Gran Canaria). With an area of 51,000 m2, Cheste is one of the group's largest warehouses, not only in Spain. Its entry into operation, meant the transfer of the activity that until then it centralized in its warehouse in Ribarroja de Turia, located a few kilometers away. For its part, the Agüimes warehouse is the company's second in the Canary Islands, it has more than 25,000 m² of surface and is allowing the development of the discount chain in the archipelago to be promoted.
In total, Lidl currently has a network of 15 warehouses in Spain with a combined surface area of almost 470,000 m2 of useful surface.
