GRAHAM & Brown, the international wall decoration group, has completed a £3million investment in a new high-speed logistics and distribution centre in Blackburn to support its online operation.

The 80,000sq ft facility, part of the group’s international e-commerce strategy, will fulfil the growing volume of orders placed via the websites of its retailer partners, which include B&Q, Homebase, Debenhams, Littlewoods and John Lewis.

Located alongside its 200,000sq ft manufacturing, international design and marketing centre, it will also enable the business to fulfil orders placed directly on its own online platform, predominantly from overseas markets where the brand has significantly increased its presence in recent years.

The facility, which includes RF scanning technology and palletised distribution, will enable the capability to service over 2,000 sku's of wallpaper, wall art, paint and kids decoration products with the facility to expand to 4,000 products– three times as many lines as its current fulfilment operation – making it the biggest online product range from any global manufacturer.

It also enables the business to provide next day delivery capability to its customers.

Ian Brown, head of CSR and logistics at Graham & Brown, said: “Like every other area of retail, customer purchasing behaviour in the wall decoration sector is changing, with a growing number of people shopping online.

“Whilst we’ve had the capacity to fulfil online orders for many years, this investment recognises the increasing role that ecommerce is playing for our retail partners in the UK.

"It means we can offer them an unrivalled breadth of range across their online channel, with a high speed fulfilment operation that delivers on their customers’ needs.”

Its flagship Graham & Brown brand, which embraces wallpaper, paint and wall art, is officially recognised as a CoolBrand - a collection of world’s most highly regarded brands as chosen by an expert panel - for four years running.