Chetwoods CEO Tim Ward talks to NLA co-founder Peter Murray OBE, about industrial intensification and co-location strategies and their implementation at U&I’s Morden Wharf development on Greenwich Peninsula, ahead of the launch of the NLA Industrial and Logistics Report next month.

In the video above Tim – a member of NLA’s Industrial and Logistics Expert Panel – discusses the challenges and opportunities of the fast-evolving industrial intensification sector, with places where co-location is being explored including hidden spaces such as redundant multi-storey car parks, the disused underground Mail Rail line and other neglected brownfield sites. He also talks about the importance of retrofitting and repurposing existing buildings and materials where appropriate.

He refers to the results of Chetwoods’ recent industry survey into perceptions and misconceptions about the co-location of industrial and residential uses, and describes some of the different intensification typologies, including layering and horizontal distribution for flexibility and future proofing, that are now being designed to free up space and create new local neighbourhoods.

Tim highlights how the speed of development of new technologies is helping the sector’s evolution with innovative noise-countering technologies, materials and vehicles and also how the Port of London Authority’s Thames Vision is encouraging future-proofed transport connections from new developments to the Thames to potentially take 400,000 trucks and 4 million tons of freight off the capital’s roads.

He explains how the milestone redevelopment of Morden Wharf on a Strategic Industrial Location will reinvent the area’s industrial past, co-locating industrial logistics with residential, workspaces and retail and community spaces. In addition Chetwoods’ £1bn scheme for the City of London’s relocation of Billingsgate and Smithfield wholesale markets to a single 17-hectare site in Barking and Dagenham has secured planning consent and progressed to a Private Bill in Parliament.

Tim concludes that “We’re going to see more schemes coming through that I think prove what true industrial intensification is, and people will, I’m sure, like what they see.”