Ahead of the busy festive season, M&S is increasing capacity at its online distribution centre at Castle Donington, as the retailer gets set to deliver the most digital Christmas yet.

As part of its Never the Same Again programme, M&S is turbocharging growth on M&S.com reflecting the accelerated shift to online shopping seen during lockdown. In August, M&S reported a 39.2% increase in its online sales and has seen over 1.5 million new downloads of its popular app since the relaunch of its Sparks loyalty scheme in July. Customers are already turning to online for festive inspiration – with Christmas related searches up 80% on last year.

In preparation, M&S is building capacity at its Leicestershire based distribution site in three ways:

1: Investment in people power

Since July, M&S has recruited 400 new permanent colleagues, and over 500 fixed term colleagues will join for the Christmas period. This means M&S’s distribution centre will be run by a team of c.4,000 over Christmas, an uplift of over 30% on the c.3,000 colleagues who supported the site in 2019.

In line with M&S’s Never the Same Again commitment to build more flexible, efficient teams across the business, all new colleagues are now trained in a minimum of two of the four core tasks (receiving products, putting products away, picking products and packing products) helping to create a more agile workforce.

The safety and wellbeing of all colleagues has been the highest priority throughout the crisis and the Castle Donington site adapted quickly with robust hygiene and social distancing measures in place from the outset – from door closing devices to increased cleaning schedules to perspex screens between workstations. All supported by clear daily communications. All new colleagues complete an induction that covers all aspects of health & safety and emphasises the importance of the measures that have been in place throughout the pandemic continuing.

2: Introducing new technology

Since it first opened in 2012, the site at Castle Donington has combined high levels of automated technology and a fantastic team of colleagues. Ahead of this Christmas, supporting M&S’s people are two new “Autobagger” machines – nicknamed Percy & Penny. These new machines can each pack 2,000 items every hour, and like the rest of the site, are powered by 100% renewable energy – with 25% coming from the solar panels installed on the roof at Castle Donington.

Additionally the team is achieving operational efficiencies through the application of Microsoft Power BI and improving ways of working through utilising the communications platform Microsoft Teams. M&S Teams usage has quadrupled during the pandemic.

3. Adding extra, more efficient space

Last year M&S completed the build of its new 245k sq ft mezzanine floor at Castle Donnington and it is fully operational for Christmas 2020. The record despatch from the mezzanine last year was 50,000 single items – this year the team is aiming for 75,000 by utilising updated picking and packing IT logic. This IT mapping has made the routes colleagues follow more efficient – meaning they can pick 15% more product but walk the same distance.

Paul Burns, M&S’s Clothing & Home Head of Logistics said, “We’re set up to ensure our colleagues can safely help our customers shop online with confidence this Christmas – from great new team members to investing in our tech.”