Port One, Great Blakenham

Client: FDS Corporation Ltd 
Architect: HBarefoot & Gilles 
Main contractor: Team AB Services (Team A/B) 
Products: Trimapanel®, Trisomet®, Colorcoat HPS200 Ultra® in Anthracite Matt, and Colorcoat Prisma® in Alaska Grey, Anthracite, Oyster Slate Grey and White 
Year: 2020/2021

Work on the Port One Logistics Park in Great Blakenham near Ipswich started to take shape early 2020 and the development is set to provide innovative warehouse and distribution facilities that have been specifically designed to meet the needs of online shopping.

A site of approx. 60 acres was granted consent for 1,300,000 sq ft of high bay warehouse/fulfilment space in unit sizes to meet occupier’s requirements and the first pre-let of 200,000 sq ft was agreed in March 2017.

Ideally located within close proximity of the port of Felixstowe, the complex will be a built-to-suit development purely focusing on the e-commerce sector and storage companies. Each of the units on the facility is built bespoke to each company’s needs, rather than altered to suit post-build.  The beauty of being built in steel is that the building is also adaptable if further extensions are required in the future.

The challenge

With the decline in high street shopping and more people in the UK turning to online shopping predictions concluded that one fifth (20%) of UK consumer purchases would be online by the end of 2019, forecast to increase to 25% by 2023. Since the predictions were made the Covid pandemic has swept through the UK and there has been a tremendous surge in online shopping with statistics confirming that online shopping is growing 129% week on week, seeing customer expectations rapidly shifting to e-commerce. 

Construction of the Port One development breaks with traditional building methods, and the unique building design of the units, procured on a ‘design and build’ basis, were designed to specifically meet the needs of e-commerce. Fulfilment houses differ from conventional warehouses in their use of the whole volume or ‘the cube’ of the building rather than the floor area.

Port One is set to provide much needed state-of-the-art e-commerce operations fulfilment warehousing and distribution facilities. With planning consent for a building height of over 20 metres, the units were purpose built to offer high ridge heights and modern very narrow aisle (VNA) logistics space to maximise the provision of cubic space.

The solution

Building Systems UK (A Tata Steel Enterprise)’s building envelope products have played a key role in the delivery of the first phase of the Port One giant e-commerce warehousing and distribution storage complex, and were incorporated into Unit No.4, a new 143,000 sq ft purpose-built unit, designed for Ipswich-based FDS Corporation Limited, a Chinese fulfilment house operator specialising in online retail.  This building is 17 metres high and has been designed to store goods on pallets and on racking nine levels high.

Matt Slater, Team AB Services said: “This truly is a ground-breaking project that is providing state-of-the-art e-commerce facilities, all purpose-built to the client’s exact specification. These units are totally different to traditional builds. Designed and built from the inside out, attention was given to the internal layout to incorporate the tenants racking and maximise the storage volume and process flow ahead of the building envelope solution that would safeguard and protect the operat