Sainsbury's Team Complete Two More LFC Projects

Simpson have recently completed two more LFC projects for Sainsbury’s Argos, at Trafford Park, Manchester and Bedford. These are small distribution hubs, known as Local Fulfilment Centres, which support the nearby Argos Store in Stores.

Trafford Park – Manchester LFC

We originally completed the Trafford Park LFC in September 2022 and 2 years later we were back to extend the stock capacity of the unit by installing a full mezzanine across the warehouse along with multiple goods lifts, sets of stairs and parcel chutes. Along with the thousands of additional shelving bays to fill the new space. The challenge was that Sainsburys needed to keep their full operation live and without disruption throughout our construction period. To achieve this Simpson needed to problem solve and agree a suitable phasing that maintained the stocking and picking operations of the distribution centre as well as give us suitable working space to safely install the large steel sections of the mezzanine and the high volume of new or relocated racking.

Other challenges were around the need to reroute M&E services to enable us to build the new mezzanine whilst keeping the existing space operational with lighting and heating of the operatives.

Due to the nature of the project a high degree of day to day communication with the client and Ops teams were required and our site team built excellent relationships and received fantastic feedback upon completion.

Bedford LFC

This is a much smaller LFC project than we usually complete that had its own unique challenges. We took 2 small areas in an existing, large regional distribution centre and created an outbound / inbound area as well as office and canteen spaces. We needed to carry out the works around ongoing distribution operations and once again a high level of coordination with the Argos operations team and DHL network team needed to be achieved. The client was extremely cost constrained and Simpson worked with them to deliver excellent quality as well as an increased scope but also keeping within the original budget. The Simpson team once again received excellent feedback showing that we are the preferred choice on this workstream for Sainsbury’s.