In the period 2013-‘2019’1) 424 Mega Distribution Centers (each more than 40,000 sqm floor space) have been established or announced in the logistics heart of Europe. The majority of them were built in Germany (285; 67%), followed by the Netherlands (98; 23%) and Belgium (41; 10%). Altogether these 424 XXL warehouses have 28.9 mln sqm floorspace.
In the last 5 years there is a clear acceleration in the establishment of these XXL warehouses: in 2018/20191) an increase of 57% in the three countries compared with 2015-2017, with The Netherlands having an above average increase of 100%, while Belgium saw similar figures in the two periods.
These conclusions are drawn in a white paper on Mega DC’s, released today by the real estate consulting firms Buck Consultants International (headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands with offices in Europe, the US, China, Singapore) and Bulwiengesa (based among other locations in Hamburg). Based on a common research interest, the two companies have combined their databases to investigate for the first time the growth of Mega DCs in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium with a fixed set of definitions.
1) ‘2019’ includes warehouses which are announced or started construction in 2018/2019 and will be opened in 2020/2021.
The demand for logistics warehousing has been growing in the past years due to a number of factors:
Effectiveness and efficiency are gained by supersizing warehouses. The 424 new warehouses in the three countries in the period 2013-2019 have altogether nearly 30 mln sqm floorspace.
1) These are DC’s announced/started construction in 2018/2019 which will be opened in 2020/2021
1) ‘2019’ includes warehouses which are announced or started construction in 2018/2019 and will be opened in 2020/2021
2) For Germany Bündesländer; for The Netherlands and Belgium provinces
Source: Buck Consultants International/Bulwiengesa
1) ‘2019’ includes warehouses which are announced or started construction in 2018/2019 and will be opened in 2020/2021
Source: Buck Consultants International/ Bulwiengesa
The increasing demand for logistics services, driven by technological and social change, confronts the actors with the task of aligning their location networks to this additional demand. The decision criteria are in conflict between specific location preferences and restricting factors such as the availability of land for development or employees. One catalyst for the growing importance of logistics is e-commerce and the supply of end consumers, which is becoming increasingly important. In practice, obstacles have been encountered in many places to realign locations close to consumers. A high level of competition for building land – especially in the major cities – means that compromises have to be made in the choice of location in many places. The search for a stable location for the future is therefore a complex undertaking for which there is no single solution.
