Asos warehouse fire puts new Eurohub 2 Berlin depot out of action

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 16, 2017

It was third time unlucky for e-tail giant Asos as the company on Tuesday morning reported that it had been hit by a warehouse first at its new Eurohub 2 distribution centre near Berlin.

The company said that the fire broke out early this morning but there were no injuries to its staff. It evacuated the centre and contained the fire in one of its four chambers. But two million items of stock out of the centre’s seven million total were in the affected part and the fire and water damage losses could add up to £6.3 million.

The €80m Eurohub 2 depot has only recently opened and handles the lion’s share of the firm’s fast-expanding European sales. It is a state of the art facility that is twice the size of its previous site.

None of the technology, automation or structure of the building has been affected by the fire. The company expects its remaining three chambers to be operational later today and said it is fully insured against stock loss and business disruption.

The retailer is fulfilling orders that would have gone from the Berlin site via its primary distribution depot in Barnsley, Northern England.

The company has suffered two previous fires with major stock disruption each time. In 2005, a massive fuel depot explosion at Buncefield in the UK destroyed the five-year-old firm’s distribution depot, as well as wreaking havoc with several other businesses. At the time the company had to suspend trading in its shares given the huge impact of the disaster.

Then in 2014, it saw £30 million worth of damage after the distribution centre in Barnsley caught fire.