Wholesaler Stax Trade Centres announced at its supplier conference yesterday that it has invested £5m into opening a sixth branch in Glasgow at the end of August.
The new dual-purpose distribution centre and cash & carry will be the company's second depot in Scotland, following on from the Edinburgh branch, which opened in September 2011.

The nationwide wholesaler purchased the former distribution site, on the Easter Queenslie Road Industrial Estate - on the East side of Glasgow in autumn 2014 - and work is well underway to transform the site into a fully refurbished, state of the art warehouse to mirror the existing larger branches across England.

The 7.2 acre site, complete with 80,000sq ft warehouse is located just three miles outside of Glasgow city centre and just minutes off junction 10 of the M8, ensuring that the depot is ideally placed to serve the Scotland's main population centres, further enhancing Stax's coverage of the Scottish market place.

It will also be the first of the Stax branches designed to support a fully-delivered operation, in addition to still catering for customers who prefer the traditional cash and carry option.

Glasgow will have a dedicated marshalling area of over 10,000 sq ft for delivering and dispatching stock and the large site also includes parking for up to 100 vehicles at the front of the building.

The Glasgow branch will be a full service operation carrying the full range from all current Stax suppliers following the same formula as the English trade centres. It will also boast 500 bays, 10 checkouts and a kitchen and bathroom showroom the same size as the Manchester branch, as well as a cafeteria.

Operations director Nigel Wright, who has been overseeing the building work, said: "This is the first Stax branch purpose designed to accommodate a fully-delivered operation, whilst still combining the benefits of cash & carry. We have invested £5million in this site and that's before stock and the opportunity that we have with the new Stax Glasgow branch is similar when we were able to build the first of our modern units in Birmingham 14 years ago in that we were able to design the building to accommodate the developing requirements of our business."

Work is fully underway at the branch, which is due to open at the end of August this year and will launch with an extensive multi-channel marketing campaign before hosting this year's Scottish Big Brands show in September.