Booktopia ramps up logistics in preparation for Christmas rush

Anticipating its best Christmas retail season ever, e-commerce giant Booktopia (ASX: BKG) has commissioned a new 1.3 hectare (13,521sqm) storage facility that can hold up to 8 million books in Sydney’s inner-west.

Based in Enfield, the new warehouse is dedicated to holding bulk stock for its distribution company, Booktopia Publisher Services, and bulk-stock for the retail business.

In addition to the new facility, the company has invested more than $25 million in automating its 14,000sqm distribution centre in Lidcombe – doubling shipping capacity to 60,000 books per day. 

Booktopia CEO Tony Nash said this year's Christmas retail season was shaping up as the best in the company's history with high consumer confidence levels and the launch of some highly anticipated best sellers.

"The next few weeks are the busiest time of the year for retail book sales, and with our new storage facility, we are set to break all records," he said.

"The Enfield warehouse has been commissioned just in time to handle the massive influx of orders we are expecting from customers who are keen to get their holiday reading list or Christmas gifts sorted in plenty of time."

"As well as having millions of customers who buy books on our website, we have over 1,000 bookstores and businesses who buy from our distribution business, including the likes of Amazon and Dymocks, so it is important to the whole book industry that we have plenty of stock ready to go."

The book retailer now has almost three hectares of storage space in western Sydney, with more coming online in 2023. 

In the 12 months to the end of June, the retailer has shipped more than 8.2 million orders, with a new order dispatched to a customer every 3.9 seconds.

Nash said the entire book industry was excited about the number of new books from best-selling authors that were being released in time for Christmas.

“With many of the world's most popular authors emerging from lockdowns with new releases, we are seeing the best crop of new books for many years,” he said.

The news comes as entities such as Australia Post and Amazon have also secured new, high-tech fulfilment centres to keep up with the ever-growing shipping demand.