Lidl is building a warehouse outside Prague that will create 500 jobs

Supermarket chain Lidl is building a logistics center near Kladno, in the town of Buštěhrad, some 20 kilometers northwest of Prague. The warehouse, on the site of a former steel plant, should open in 2021.

It will be one of
Europe’s largest, employing up to 500 people. The Germany-based
brand also plans to open 15 new stores in the Czech Republic this
year. The total investment in the warehouse and stores will exceed
CZK 3 billion, according to Lidl ČR director Pavel Stratil. “Our
fifth logistics center will have the capacity to supply up to 90
outlets,” he said.

The new warehouse
will have almost 60,000 square meters of storage space with one-third
temperature controlled for fresh or frozen goods. Some 95 trucks can
be parked at once.

A new road will be
built at Lidl’s expense to keep the trucks from going directly
through the Buštěhrad area. Trucks will turn to the warehouse from
the I/61 roadway, where a new road and a roundabout will be built at
a place called U Kovošrotu. Other companies in the same industrial
zone will also use the roadway.

“Approval of
the warehouse depends on approval of the roadway,” Buštěhrad
Mayor Daniela Javorčeková said at a press conference when the
warehouse construction started.

Lidl opened its
first stores in the Czech Republic in 2003, now has 245 locations.
The retailer this year has already opened four stores in Prague, and
more are planned for Prague, Pardubice, Brno, České Budějovice and
Kolín. Nine Czech stores this year will be modernized.

Lidl in 2018 had the
second-highest revenues for a Czech supermarket chain, at CZK 52.3
billion, trailing Kaufland’s CZK 57.6 billion.

Both Lidl and
Kaufland are owned by the German retail group Schwarz. Lidl was
founded in 1930 as a food wholesaler and shifted into discount
markets and supermarkets in the 1970s. It now has 10,000 outlets in
Europe and the US, employing 315,000 people. Schwarz Group is the
fifth-largest retailer in the world.