This side of utopia
Automated warehouse for retro goods coming up in Oxfordshire. There wouldn’t appear to be an end in sight to a strong ongoing trend – demand for music on CD and records, and for films on DVD and video. Now Utopia Music is building a distribution warehouse in Bicester as part of a long-term contract with DP World.
The trend towards these retro products would appear to be unstoppable. Demand for music and videos that you can actually hold – records, DVDs, videos – is growing all across the UK. Universal Music saw 32% growth year-on-year for such audio and video storage media in the first quarter of 2023 alone.
In 2022, 17.3 million albums were sold in the UK – 67% of which consisted of CDs. The ‘physical’ video market in the UK, in turn, saw sales of GBP 209 million in 2022. Retailer HMV has announced that it will return to its original flagship shop on London’s Oxford Street.
The sector needs warehousing space as much as it needs shop space, however. To this end Utopia Music has now signed a long-term warehousing and logistics contract with DP World.
Thus a new purpose-built warehouse is now being built on a 25,000 m2 site in Bicester, in the English county of Oxfordshire. High-density storage and robots will be used to distribute more than 30 million records and videos to the UK as well as to export markets.
A shuttle service from the old site
The contract is worth about GBP 100 million. The distribution arm, Utopia Distribution Services (UDS), will concentrate its stock there. It will move it to the facility from its current location in Aylesbury this summer. Staff will be retained thanks to a company-run shuttle.
The facility will also complement existing Utopia warehouses located in Dartford, Kent, just outside London. Kim Bayley, CEO of Era, the UK’s digital entertainment and retail association, welcomed the move, speaking on behalf of 3,000 retailers. “Despite the growth of streaming, hit albums and videos still have their place in people’s hearts.”