Oxylane is making big investments in new logistic facilities in France, Spain and Italy to improve operations and to cope with their expansion. These kinds of investments are crucial for the world’s largest integrated sporting goods retailer, because its Décathlon stores are designed to hold no stock.
In southeastern France, the group has announced an investment of €36 million in its logistic hub at St. Quentin-Fallavier, where it is adding 42,000 square meters and hiring 80 more people to supply 29 Décathlon stores in the Rhône-Alpes and Auvergne regions on a daily basis. The company already has a distribution center of similar size on the site, which hosts warehouses for many other companies. The new complex is set to be ready in the first quarter of 2010.
In Italy, where the geography makes it more difficult to transport merchandise across the peninsula, on Dec. 1 the group started up a new distribution center of 25,000 square meters near Naples to supply the growing number of Décathlon stores being opened in the southern part of the country.
Southern Italy as well as the region around Rome, where Décathlon has been opening several stores lately, had been previously supplied by Décathlon’s logistic platform at Castel San Pietro near Bologna, which was opened in November 2005.
In Spain, meanwhile, press reports indicate that Décathlon is about to complete its negotiations with the regional government of Aragòn for a big project, covering 200,000 square meters in the area of Zaragoza, that could cost more than €80 million and become operational in 2011. In addition to a big new logistics center, it would involve a theme park for various sports activities and a superstore of 8,000 square meters that would replace a smaller one in the area.
