Aldi, Britain’s biggest discounter, has made the first delivery from its new Distribution Centre at Bardon in Leicestershire, marking the start of the first phase of operations at the UK’s largest supermarket warehouse.
The retailer has invested more than £500m in the site, which will employ around 1,000 people and forms part of Aldi’s £1.6bn investment in Britain during 2026 and 2027.
Once fully operational, Bardon will serve nearly 350 stores across the UK and have the capacity to handle nearly seven million pallets of stock a year. It will also serve as a National Replenishment Hub, supporting Aldi’s existing warehouse network.
And because it is Aldi’s highest-tech and most efficient Distribution Centre in the UK, it will support the supermarket’s promise to be the country’s lowest-price supermarket for years to come.
At 1.3 million square feet, or more than 120,000 square metres, Bardon is the UK’s largest Distribution Centre. To put this into context, 65 Aldi stores or nearly 17 full-sized football pitches could comfortably sit inside the building.
Giles Hurley, chief executive officer of Aldi UK and Ireland, said: “The state-of-the-art technology in Bardon will significantly increase the efficiency of our warehouse network, meaning we can continue to deliver the best possible prices for our customers, every single day.
“Our ambition is to make quality groceries affordable and accessible to all, and that can only happen when everybody in Britain has an Aldi store on their doorstep.
“That’s why we’re committing significant investment in opening new stores and Distribution Centres up and down the country, taking us closer to our goal of having 1,500 stores across the UK.”
Planning for the site was approved in August 2020 and ground works began the following April. Work on the main building was completed in 2024. Bardon is made up of five linked buildings, including four ambient and six temperature-controlled chambers for chilled and frozen products.
The building has 100 HGV bays at the front, and 40 at the rear. It is also the lowest carbon density warehouse across the Aldi South Group, and the 19,000 solar panels installed on the roof will, at times, be able to generate all the electricity required by the site.
Around 1,000 colleagues will be employed at the site, including many colleagues who will transition from Aldi’s sites at Sawley in Derbyshire, and Atherstone in Warwickshire. Recruitment is also under way at the site, and more information about these roles can be found at Warehouse Jobs | Aldi Recruitment UK.
Aldi has been working with technology partners, Dematic and Cimcorp, to install the very latest automated storage systems at Bardon. That includes machinery that will unpack deliveries from suppliers and store cases of products in floor-to-ceiling racking until it is ready to be delivered to stores. This technology will help Aldi to reinvest in keeping prices low for its customers.
