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Retailer MFI says its new 70,000ft2 national distribution centre (NDC) in Thorne, South Yorks, will play a vital part in revitalising the company. The £71m NDC is due to open on 7 December and will be operated by DHL-Exel under a five-year contract. Chris Pavlosky, MFI's chief operating officer, says it will significantly improve its offering to customers.

When it is fully operational at the beginning of 2008, the NDC will carry six weeks' stock to allow orders to be serviced directly from  its stores rather than from factory orders "with all the unreliability that implies". The firm has invested £16m in warehouse management systems to improve the performance of its order picking. The cost of this has been split 50:50 with DHL-Exel.

MFI had planned to locate its NDC in the Midlands' 'golden triangle', but only design and build sites were available, says Pavlosky, which would have taken too much time: "It would have been 18 months [before it was operational] and our overriding ambition is to give better customer service. The more we delay, the further away achievement of that ambition is."

Pavlosky says although the site in Thorne is further away from the South and South-West, lower labour costs and proximity to the ports of Hull and Immingham for imports mean that "Thorne is a pretty good place to be". The NDC is supplemented by five regional home delivery centres (HDC). Product will be bulk-picked at Thorne and then trunked to the HDCs where it is broken  down for onward delivery to customers.