GEODIS will soon move into 57,500 m² in the Parc de Douvrin, in Pas-de-Calais. In fact, at the beginning of the year Prologis delivered five out of the nine units the logistics firm wants to occupy by 2020. Another was completed this summer, two more will be ready by November and the last one was ordered for March next year.
The double-fronted building, covering more than 69,000 m², is divided into 11 units and had already been given planning and ICPE environmental protection permission for a previous project that was not seen through. This worked out well for GEODIS which was looking for real estate solutions for a multi-client site. What's more, the building is on its way to obtaining a Very Good BREEAM rating. This is the second development within Prologis's Douvrin Park which stretches over 45 hectares of grounds. The park is part of a partnership agreed in 2017 with the Artois-Flandres, inter-community industrial zone syndicate (Siziaf), owner of the Artois Flandres industrial park which covers 460 hectares. Most of the 70 firms in the park are from the industrial sector. On spec construction work on the two remaining units of the building is already under way ready for delivery in June 2020.
GEODIS is not the only company looking to move in to Douvrin, which is ideally located - you can avoid the saturated A1 motorway and use the RN 41 and 47 main roads instead. At the beginning of the year we also delivered a 26,300 m² building for the La Poste group. A turnkey project, it was given the rare Excellent rating by BREEAM. Colissimo now runs one of the biggest parcel sorting platforms in France out of it. This is a major project for the La Poste group and involved substantial investment, particularly for the state-of-the-art automated equipment which can handle up to 32,000 parcels per hour. When the first stone was laid in October 2018, Colissimo representatives could barely contain their eagerness to see themselves installed as e-commerce players in the future park. Online trading is indeed very much present in the Hauts-de-France region and the probable Brexit should attract new companies to this sector in this region. That's good news for Siziaf which is keeping a close eye on businesses that could create jobs in the Artois-Flandres industrial park on top of heavy industry. At the heart of several areas of unemployment, any businesses wanting to move in to this business zone would, in fact, have access to all the manpower they needed. An argument we make sure we put forward to logistics firms for whom recruitment is always a big problem.
We have every confidence in the power of attraction of GEODIS and the La Poste group, as well as the dynamics of the Artois Flandres industrial park which recently welcomed logistics projects from Carrefour and Simastock as well as Aquarèse and the Draka group's industrial plans. That's why we are proposing two "ready to build" buildings in the park. One is single-fronted of 44,000 m² and the other, a cross-dock of 25,000 m². The four buildings planned for the site will have a free height of 12 metres so you can really aim high!
Photographe : Ph. Frutier