Leschaco is planning to add to its growing chemical warehouse network with a new logistics centre in Moerdijk, due to open later this year
Leschaco is planning to open a chemical logistics centre in Moerdijk, situated strategically between the major ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp and with optimal accessibility to the European hinterland. In January this year, Leschaco signed a lease with David Hart Group (DHG), an industrial land developer, for a new ADR warehouse on the site. The new facility is scheduled to be ready in the third quarter of this year.
The planned warehouse will offer some 45,000 pallet spaces on a footprint of 29,000 m2. It will be divided into five areas, with one for general cargo and the other four being designed to handle chemicals and other dangerous goods and featuring a CO2 fire extinguishing system.
“This project is an important strategic milestone for our presence in Europe. It is also necessary to meet the increasing demand in the region and to be closer to our customers,” says Constantin Conrad, managing partner of Leschaco Group.
The location certainly provides that proximity, with daily barge traffic along the Rhine and Meuse systems between Rotterdam and Antwerp, as well as two public rail terminals in the vicinity. Moerdijk guarantees optimal accessibility to the European hinterland and ensures that customers’ products are transported in an efficient manner in terms of cost, speed, accessibility and frequency, Leschaco says.
That approach is the same as the company took in opening its chemicals warehouse in Port Klang, Malaysia at the start of 2022, taking advantage of rapid growth in contract logistics in the chemicals sector in the country. At the time, country manager Lothar Lauszat said: “The constantly growing demand from the chemical industry made the new building urgently necessary. This investment is of great strategic importance for our existing and new customers.”
MEET AND GREEN
The new Moerdijk site will fill a similar need. “The new logistics centre offers our global customers in the chemical, healthcare, automotive, industrial materials and consumer goods sectors a wide range of services and, in combination with other Leschaco products, complex logistics solutions at the highest level,” says Sebastian Haebler, head of Global Contract Logistics at Leschaco. “In addition to pallet storage, this includes various kinds of value-added services according to our customers’ demands.”
The new building meets all safety and environmental standards. Solar panels on the roof will be able to cover part of the electricity demand. Other sustainable measures, such as the use of electric floor heating instead of gas or oil installations, LED lighting, and the highest construction standards for isolation, also contribute to improving the climate balance, as do the short distances to the port of Moerdijk for transport by barge and rail and e-charging stations for cars.
DHG is the biggest developer of large logistics real estate in the Netherlands and, since 2015, has realised more than 1.3m m2 of distribution centres using the ‘SmartLog’ concept. These distribution centres are designed in such a way that they are suitable for a wide range of types of user. DHG’s owner, David Hart, says: “Leschaco and DHG are both family businesses; our motivation, standards and values are very similar. Partly for this reason, we are honoured to add Leschaco to our DHG ‘family’ and to be a part of their expansion within Europe.”
