The company spending £180million on creating a new site at the former Aylesford Newsprint site - creating 3,000 jobs in the process - has been ranked the top logistics developer in Europe once again.

Panattoni which operates in the UK, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Spain, the Netherlands and Hungary, won the top ranking in the poll conducted by PropertyEU for the fifth year running.

It emerged top after delivering nearly 70million sq ft of logistics, warehousing and distribution space - nearly three times that of the firm in second place, Prologis.

It also has nearly 300m sq ft of space in the pipeline for development over the next three years.

A key site among those projects will be Panattoni Park Aylesford, which will create 1.9 million sq ft of warehouse and logistics space on the 90-acre site previously home to Aylesford Newsprint. It was granted planning permission earlier this year by Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council.

It is promising 3,000 jobs.

Tony Watkins, development director at Panattoni UK, said: “Keeping ahead of the game is the challenge that developers such as ourselves face.

“The combination of the Covid-19 environment and the continuing e-commerce boom has required developers to build facilities of all shapes and sizes for manufacturing, storage and distribution purposes.

“Demand from e-commerce players seeking to expand is a large part of the story. However, the pandemic’s disruption to supply chains has also led manufacturers and other occupiers to increase their footprint close to ports and gateway distribution hubs.

“Our plans for Aylesford offer a highly effective location for the efficient logistics and distribution that is demanded by our world-class customers.”

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