A DRINKS and bottling firm has boosted its warehousing capacity to help support rapid growth and create more jobs.

County Durham's Lanchester Group has taken its total storage floorspace close to one million square feet, giving the company what bosses say is the largest bonded warehouse capacity in the North.

The expansion enables the group to keep pace with increasing throughput at its Greencroft Bottling plant, at Annfield Plain. Most of the wine it bottles is made up of New World varieties, mainly imported in bulk through Teesport for the UK market.

All told, the family business is investing £6.5m in new storage facilities on Tyneside as it creates between 20 and 25 new jobs on the back of a rise in turnover to £80m - up from £65m. A total of 55 new permanent full-time posts have been created across the group’s Lanchester Wine Cellars, Lanchester Wine Sales, Greencroft Bottling and other divisions in recent weeks, and another 40 temporary jobs are in the pipeline. It now employs about 350 people.

The company was started by Tony and Veronica Cleary in the front room of their house in Lanchester, County Durham, more than 35 years ago. Daughters Alex and Caroline and son Ben also work in the business. Despite several takeover approaches Lanchester remains 100 per cent family-owned.

The latest addition to the group’s property portfolio is in Felling, Gateshead the former warehouse of Waverley Vintners. At 225,000 sq ft – is the largest single off-site warehousing unit in the portfolio. The new facility, acquired from Gateshead Council, will come into use in early summer after the company has completed renovation and insulation works.

Other new facilities include 135,000 sq ft, also in Felling, and 100,000 sq ft at Blaydon, plus its original 450,000 sq ft at Annfield Plain, making a total of more than 900,000 sq ft.

Lanchester is spending a further £1.5m at its Annfield Plain headquarters site to improve roads and parking on and around the site.

It has also acquired a new fleet of 20 new gas-powered Toyota Tonero forklift trucks to service the new facilities.

Tony Cleary, group managing director, said: “Buying these three new major facilities over the past 24 months has been extremely important for the group to ensure we are able to maintain our recent growth. There is a shortage of very large warehouses in the region and I am absolutely delighted to have secured these for our portfolio.

“Our new warehousing facilities enable us to maintain our continued growth at both our Annfield Plain headquarters and in other parts of the region. We are excited to be able to renovate and bring back to life previously redundant warehousing facilities in Blaydon and Felling, creating new jobs in the process.”

He continued: “We are extremely proud at Lanchester to remain a family business that is delivering sustainable growth and new jobs across the North-East in the most environmentally sustainable manner possible.”