GXO to run L’Oréal logistics across Central Europe

Excerpt: GXO will manage L’Oréal logistics across three Central European markets. A new 20,000m² Czech facility will support regional operations.

GXO has signed a multi-year agreement with L’Oréal to manage logistics operations across Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Extending a relationship that has already lasted more than 15 years in the United States and Mexico, the new agreement will support L’Oréal’s decision to outsource regional logistics activity in Central Europe. Retail and ecommerce flows will be served from a greenfield site in Lavičky near Brno.

Planned at approximately 20,000m², the facility is expected to employ around 80 people and serve nine countries once operational. The site is due to go live in mid-2027 and will be developed in line with BREEAM Excellent sustainability standards.

L’Oréal’s luxury, dermo-cosmetic, professional, and consumer goods categories will be handled through the operation. That portfolio creates a complex logistics profile, with high SKU variety, channel-specific fulfilment, value-added services, returns, batch control, promotion peaks, and retail replenishment all sitting within the same regional network.

Beauty logistics combines several pressures often seen separately in other retail categories, because products can be high value, small format, promotion-sensitive, and fragmented across many brands and routes to market. Stores, ecommerce orders, salons, pharmacies, and wholesale partners can all require different handling rules, packaging standards, delivery profiles, and service expectations.

Central Europe is gaining weight as a regional distribution base because it offers access to major road corridors, established manufacturing zones, skilled labour pools, and growing ecommerce demand. Brno’s position gives the Lavičky site access to Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Poland, and wider European routes without relying solely on more congested Western European distribution clusters.

Large logistics providers are continuing to build capacity around regional operating platforms as customers seek faster delivery, higher service expectations, and more resilient inventory placement. DHL’s €160m French logistics infrastructure programme followed the same pattern in another European market, covering warehousing, fleet, charging, express, freight, forwarding, and supply chain operations.

Contract logistics has shifted from a space-and-labour model toward control, technology, and repeatability. Customers increasingly require providers to operate highly specific workflows while still scaling across markets, particularly where omnichannel operations depend on accurate inventory, fast replenishment, careful handling, and data visibility across stores, ecommerce, returns, and customer-specific requirements.

GXO already handles more than half a billion beauty products each year for more than 90 brands and operates over 50 beauty logistics sites across 10 countries. That existing sector footprint gives the company a base of process knowledge around quality control, value-added services, luxury handling, professional product lines, and reverse logistics.

The Czech facility also reflects the growing role of building standards in logistics procurement. BREEAM Excellent requirements bring energy efficiency, building quality, and workplace design into the service proposition, rather than treating sustainability as a separate corporate measure.

Outsourcing gives L’Oréal access to scale, technology, and regional expertise without placing all operational complexity inside its own network. It can also support faster adjustment as channel demand changes, particularly where ecommerce growth and retail replenishment need to be managed from a shared stock base.

The agreement strengthens GXO’s position in Central European beauty logistics and gives L’Oréal a purpose-built platform for regional growth. As retail supply chains become more fragmented by channel and more demanding by service level, specialist contract logistics capacity is becoming a competitive tool rather than a back-office function.