Home Bargains Opens ‘Next-Generation’ Automated Warehouse

UK discount retailer Home Bargains has officially opened its state-of-the-art automated distribution centre in St Helens, Merseyside, marking a significant milestone in its logistics and growth strategy.

Spanning approximately one million square feet, the facility operates 24/7 to support 300 Home Bargains stores across the UK. The centre has created around 1,000 jobs, including skilled system and engineering roles, and offers favourable shift patterns to promote a healthy work-life balance.

Strategically located off Junction 8 of the M62, the site is accessible via road, public transport, and a dedicated footway/cycleway linking it to St Helens, Warrington, and the wider Omega Business Park.

TJ Morris, the owner of Home Bargains, has invested approximately £400 million in this landmark development—a key step in the company’s ambitious growth strategy to expand the reach of Home Bargains stores across the UK.

The automation system, developed in partnership with WITRON, incorporates cutting-edge order picking technology, with up to 80% of stock picking now automated.

Construction began in April 2022, and the first store deliveries were dispatched on 5th May 2025. By the end of the ramp-up phase in August 2025, logistics capacity is projected to grow by over 57%.

Looking ahead, TJ Morris has commenced work on a second distribution centre in Doncaster, designed to mirror the St Helens facility with identical automated systems. Scheduled to open in 2028, the Doncaster site will provide capacity to deliver to a further 300+ stores, further supporting the long-term growth plans for the business.

With this significant investment in automation and infrastructure, Home Bargains is poised to enhance its supply chain efficiency and support its continued expansion across the UK.

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Large-scale Automated Marshalling Solution

Home Bargains, a high-street discount retailer, has successfully implemented a large-scale automated marshalling solution from Lowpad at its Amesbury, UK distribution centre. This initiative addresses recruitment challenges and optimizes the final stage of its modern warehouse facility, creating a 24/7 operational marshalling solution managed by Lowpad’s fleet manager software.

Home Bargains’ Amesbury distribution centre faced significant recruitment challenges due to its remote location, requiring a large workforce for labour-intensive tasks. To alleviate the recruitment burden and reduce operational costs, Home Bargains implemented an automated marshalling process. The new system processes over 200,000 roll cages weekly using 91 Lowpad AMRs and 36 handover locations, 21 of which are fully automated.

Chris Tilly, General Manager of Home Bargains, praised the impact of Lowpad’s solution: “Lowpad has significantly reduced the number of workers needed, considerably decreasing staff numbers, helping us achieve our cost-saving goals and addressing our recruitment challenges.”

Lowpad effectively integrated new equipment with Home Bargains’ existing infrastructure, creating a fully integrated process. This streamlined, automated process now requires minimal manual intervention, from pallet intake into the warehouse to dispatch pick stock in roll cages, resulting in an effective, 24/7 operational system that significantly reduces the dependency on manual resources.

Jonathan van den Dool, Sales Director at Lowpad, highlighted the project’s success: “Lowpad’s automation solution not only streamlined Home Bargains’ operations but also addressed critical recruitment challenges. Implementing a fully integrated system in an existing and operational environment demonstrates our capability to provide effective brownfield automation solutions for retail distribution.”

Key features of the project:

– Processes over 200,000 roll cages weekly
– Utilizes 91 Lowpads, managed by Lowpad Supervisor software
– Includes 36 handover locations, 21 of which are fully automated

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Automation Lifecycle Management

Joe Morris (pictured) played a pivotal role in the success of TJ Morris, trading as Home Bargains. In this interview, by Kirsty Adams, he discusses his new company, ARMS Innovations, which is revolutionising the approach to asset lifecycle management. We also cover important trends impacting UK retail.

Where did the idea for ARMS Innovations come from?

Joe Morris (JM): “TJ Morris was an early adopter of automation. I’m an engineer who came from a robotics background and was eager to introduce automation when I joined my brother’s business as Operations Director in 2000. To me, ‘owning’ the automation — managing the engineers who maintained the equipment ourselves — was crucial. It meant that we, rather than the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), had full visibility of the system data. This ethos has heavily influenced the ARMS Innovations approach.

“The ARMS Innovations story begins with the software —a task management system—developed by Jonathan Lane, who, at the time, was the Engineering Manager at the Amesbury TJ Morris site.
Jonathan created software solutions and a system that, instead of sending errors to a control room, triaged them automatically, directly to the engineers. Once digitised, a new engineer, via mobile handset, has all the information required to carry out their job, as efficiently as an engineer that has worked with the equipment for 10 years or more.”

And how did it help improve the TJ Morris Operation?

JM: “Digitising tasks enables efficiency improvements of 10-20% in automation, control room, facilities, cleaning, contractor, and operational functions. The total labour saving for TJ Morris was £1,800,000 per annum, per site. The continuous improvement journey, over time, brings a 5-10% improvement in system availability. For TJ Morris the 5% improvement achieved equated to £170 million per year in extra capacity. Fully digitising these tasks is a big job, but there is big payback and benefits. Following the success of the system at TJ Morris, we launched ARMS Innovations in 2022. Now, the system is being rolled out to warehouse operators, including major UK retailers. We also provide the onsite engineering teams for customers.”

What trends are significantly impacting the UK retail sector?

JM: “E-commerce has added instability to retail operations. It demands perfection, which adds a lot of pressure to the operation and demands very high system availability. You need to have the people and systems in place to get it right the first time. That’s why you automate, that’s why you have no option but to digitise. A second trend is the loss of ready and keen labour. Prior to Brexit the retail industry became complacent, the abundant supply of labour made it much easier. But many of those people have now left the UK, labour costs are rising rapidly, driven by double digit minimum wage inflation, so the only way to get the product out of the door is to automate.”

Ok, what about the early adopters who are eager to extend the life of their assets?

JM: “The typical life of an automated distribution centre is 15-20 years. If you can extend this by 5-10 years, you can achieve a 30-50% extra return on investment. Early adopters of automation are facing this challenge now. Current investors in automation will face this challenge in the future. They need to think about it now. As well as its software, ARMS has developed a documented process for asset lifecycle management, the ARMS QMS (Quality Management System), to cover all of the process required to design, build and operate a highly automated distribution system.”

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