Construction on the site of the old Imperial Tobacco factory has started after a GBP 50 million deal was secured with a property developer and real estate firm. It will soon be home to high quality industrial and logistics space and is expected to be completed by 2023, reports Nottingham Post.

Imperial Tobacco started operations on the site in the early 1970s, but after moving to Europe in 2016, the 'Horizon' factory began to be demolished in 2019. At peak operation, the factory employed more than 7,000 people and produced billions of cigarettes every year.
The building itself won the Financial Times award for industrial architecture in 1973, as it was much brighter and more organised than the typical industrial factories of the period. Eventually, the site on Clifton Boulevard in the west of Nottingham was sold to Henry Boot Developments (HBD) in 2017 and, following the close of a GBP 53.8 million forward funding deal between HBD and Oxenwood Real Estate, work began on the redevelopment.
Oxenwood, a real estate firm investing in the UK and European real estate markets with a focus on the logistics industry, and HBD have renamed the site the 'Power Park', the report said. According to the developer, 90 per cent of the material from the original structure will be reused and the concrete from the old factory will be crushed and reused to limit the scheme’s environmental impact.
East Midlands Chamber chief executive Scott Knowles said: “After years of uncertainty and speculation over the future of a site that carries huge significance to lots of people in Nottingham and the surrounding area, it’s great to see the first spades in the ground at Power Park. For many years, Imperial Tobacco was a major name on the city’s business landscape and it’s been sad to see the land in Thane Road sit unused.”
The Power Park will feature seven buildings with a total of 426,000 square feet of high-quality industrial and logistics space. It is hoped the final scheme will create up to 1,000 jobs.