The Perfume Shop is primed and ready to vastly speed up customer orders. The UK’s self-proclaimed largest fragrance retailer has been successfully testing a new £2.5 million “industry-leading warehouse automation system” at its processing centre in Dunstable.

And it’s now ready to press the ‘go’ button, officially launching the new system that will lead to improved efficiencies with three times quicker order processing and a reduction in packaging of 40%. The system claims to deliver an automated packaging capacity to over 1,500 orders an hour.

And that will come in handy as last year said it sold over 500,000 fragrances in the week leading up to Christmas, with 10 December being its busiest day for the website with over 31,748 bottles sold. Retail’s ‘Golden Quarter’ also saw one of the biggest trading periods for The Perfume Shop, delivering around 50% of the businesses total sales.

It said the advancements will further accelerate its commitment to reducing the environmental impact of its outbound supply chain. With these new innovations in place, also means reduced carbon emissions as fewer delivery trucks will be required on the road, it noted.

It will also be “future-proofing distribution capabilities and operations” to enable the retailer “to continue to provide great service and always meet their delivery promise both to stores and customers”. As a result, alongside the new website re-platform, the automated packing machines “will be able to further advance the businesses customer growth”, it said.

Growth in online traffic continues and it expects e-store to deliver around 28% of its sales this year with growth vs last year.

Gill Smith, Managing Director from The Perfume Shop, added: “This scale of investment demonstrates The Perfume Shop’s commitment to our customers, our communities, and our colleagues. We’re also seeing our e-commerce business move from strength-to-strength.”

It should also help meet current and future growth in customer demand for both online and offline products and services. With the festive season now over, the Golden Quarter saw one of the biggest trading periods for The Perfume Shop, delivering approximately 50% of the businesses total sales.