Zebra extends UK warehousing in Preston

Barcode demand predicted to rise despite Q1 sales fall

Auto-ID and niche printer vendor Zebra has extended its Preston warehouse, spending £1.9m on the 20,000-square-foot centre.

According to the vendor, this is because of growth in barcode labelling as a sector which will eventually tie in with big data trends. An official launch is being held on 2 July.

Zebra kit is available through a range of UK distributors including Ingram Micro, Midwich/Synergix, Varlink and ScanSource.

In May, the company announced first-quarter global earnings down 2.8 per cent to $236m (£152m) from the prior-year quarter. That represents a sales decline in Europe of 9.8 per cent.

Anders Gustafsson, chief executive of Zebra, said in the announcement that a decline had been anticipated in Europe. In the US, growth had been expected but a slowdown happened instead, but the company remains positive overall.

"During the quarter, our international operations performed largely as expected. Business activity in all regions has now increased, and the pipeline of opportunities has improved," Gustafsson said in the announcement.

"We also made progress on developing new, incremental revenue streams with solutions such as mobile point-of-sale, location solutions and RFID."