Hut Group’s Airport City expansion
ONLINE health and beauty retailer The Hut Group has revealed plans to create more than 6,000 new jobs at its new Manchester headquarters.
The company recently announced plans to base itself at Airport City as part of significant expansion plans.
Now it has revealed its ambitions to grow its global workforce from 4,000 to 10,000 over the next three years, with a vast majority based in the north west.
It will retain its massive Warrington distribution centre where around 800 staff work and its former headquarters in Northwich, Cheshire, where most of the remaining 2,600 current marketing and admin roles are.
THG’s growth plan means more 6,000 new jobs in tech, marketing and administration will be created for the airport HQ.
It comes after a record breaking year which saw group sales for 2017 soar by 47 per cent to £736m creating £318m in gross profit, up by 51pc.
Matthew Moulding, CEO, said: “Last year was a year of significant development and growth for The Hut Group, as we invested in our infrastructure, our technology platform, our people and our brands. THG is now firmly a global player and it is particularly pleasing to see more than 70pc of group sales coming from overseas, and 58pc of total sales being of our own brands.
“During the year our acquisitions of Hangar Seven and UK2 saw us develop further our propriety technology platform, THG Ingenuity, and investments in key brands such as ESPA, Illamasqua and GLOSSYBOX further extended our leading beauty offer.
“In addition, our job creation continued apace and we welcomed over 1,800 colleagues to The Hut Group around the world.
“With our growing, talented workforce, our leading brands and our cutting-edge technology and infrastructure, we look forward to a further year of growth in 2018.”
THG has spent £164m in strategic acquisitions during the year, including Hangar Seven and UK2 – a digital content agency and web-hosting business respectively – ESPA, Illamasqua, RY. com.au and Europe’s largest subscription beauty box supplier, GLOSSYBOX.
It also spent £39m on infrastructure projects including manufacturing, distribution, supply chain and office facilities. This included the 1m sq ft Warrington warehouse.
During the year THG created 1,884 new jobs, growing its global workforce to more than 4,000.
The group also created an in-house leadership development platform, THG Academy, for its next generation of business leaders.
THG plans to create a further 2,000 jobs by the end of the year and the same again in 2019 and 2020.
Most of the new jobs will be based at the 870,000 sq ft HQ at Manchester Airport.