Logismarket, the Industrial Directory.

TK Maxx - the world’s largest, and fast-growing,‘off price’ retailer - has developed the new centre, built on a greenfield site, to boost its distribution capacity and to support its expanding programme of new store openings. SDIGreenstone was chosen as the preferred supplier, in a competitive tender, on the strength of its ability to develop a sortation system precisely suited to TK Maxx’s demanding and idiosyncratic requirements, and for its capability to bring the project home on time, within exacting deadlines, and within budget.

The Stoke centre is the first of a new breed of facilities for TK Maxx, designed to support the distinctive ‘no frills’ way in which the company operates. Clothing merchandise in all TK Maxx stores is displayed on hangers and arranged by size, not by product and without packaging, with each outlet holding more than 50,000 items.The goods, mainly well-known brands sold at up to 60 per cent less than usual high street prices, are purchased from the manufacturers through an intensive worldwide programme of opportunistic buying, with new lines coming on stream every week. This enables TK Maxx to achieve very high levels of stock turn; more than 10,000 lines are replenished in each store every week, which demands an extremely accurate and responsive logistical structure.

The new Stoke facility acts as a processing centre – now TK Maxx’s biggest in the UK – to make the merchandise ‘store ready’. Products arriving throughout the day from the suppliers are stripped of packaging (with shirts, for example, the pins, collar stiffener cards and tissue paper are discarded, along with the outer boxes), sorted and packed, ready to hang, into tote boxes.Around 90 percent of merchandise is delivered to Stoke in flat packed form, but more than 50 per cent leaves the centre ready to hang.

The tote boxes are transferred to distribution centres in Rochdale and Wakefield, where the merchandise is cross-docked for onward delivery to the stores.The Stoke centre has been designed with the processing capacity to serve more than 100 stores.