SEGRO has been appointed to develop a 1.85m sq ft high-tech food manufacturing and distribution campus on a site at Spondon, Derby.

SEGRO will work with SmartParc to create a new asset class dedicated to food manufacturing and distribution. SmartParc SEGRO Spondon paves the way for the food industry to collaborate to meet the challenges of sustainable production whilst addressing the need for efficient direct routes to consumers.

As development partner, SEGRO will provide a multi-million-pound investment to regenerate the brownfield site. SmartParc will provide the onsite managed services, supporting the food community to increase production efficiency and drive reduced operational costs through collaborative working. SmartParc's revolutionary energy sharing infrastructure will utilise wind and solar combined with central services, to deliver the most sustainable food production community in the country.

The announcement of the partnership follows Derby City Council granting planning permission in June and the agreement of grant funding contributions from D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership and Derby City Council.

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D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership has allocated £12 million towards the project from the Government's Getting Building Fund – the largest single allocation from D2N2’s £44 million allocation.

SmartParc was founded to address the challenges facing the food sector. The 1.85m sqft collaborative hub at Spondon represents a pioneering technical breakthrough. It will provide food manufacturing facilities ranging from start-up incubation units through to large-scale manufacturing facilities ranging from 50,000 – 400,000 sqft. The site will also be home to a Food Manufacturing Technology Centre of Excellence to future-proof the food industry, offering education and career opportunities to secure both the local and global food supply chains.

SmartParc will provide a new sustainable blueprint for the food industry. Climate change has highlighted the need for far-reaching industry change and, in response, SmartParc will re-engineer current food manufacturing and distribution processes. It will create a new, forward-thinking ecosystem of food production, looking towards new technologies such as vertical farming to disconnect weather from our ability to produce sustainable food.

This mission begins with SmartParc SEGRO Spondon as the flagship site. Building on Spondon’s heritage as a site of cutting-edge engineering, SmartParc will create 5,000 direct jobs and enable a new collaborative, flexible work model to accommodate people’s evolving lifestyles with the ambition of reconnecting the local community to food production.

SmartParc SEGRO Spondon will be home to the first low-carbon food manufacturing community. A central distribution hub to consolidate goods in deliveries will streamline the distribution chain, providing a reduction in cost for occupiers whilst improving sustainability by eliminating food miles. From design and material selection to support for eventual occupiers, SmartParc and SEGRO will help to ensure excellent environmental performance and bold efficiency gains at the ground-breaking site.