Cazoo has grown its Customer Centre used car handover network to 21 sites with the opening of its latest new facility in Newcastle.

The rapidly expanding online car retailer, which is poised to expand into Europe with its used car retail and car subscription offering, has opened the facility, on in Scotswood Road, Newcastle, following a £1 million investment – creating 20 new jobs.

Cazoo’s new Customer Centre site in Newcastle was acquired earlier this year.

Its opening comes less than a month after the opening of Cazoo’s 20th Customer Centre at West Thurrock’s Lakeside Retail Park and the £6.5m acquisition of Bristol-based Van365 as it expanded its retail offering into commercial vehicles.

Cazoo founder and chief executive, Alex Chesterman, said: “Consumers across the UK are increasingly embracing buying and selling cars entirely online.

“Our Customer Centres provide the added option for consumers to collect a car they buy from us or drop off a car they sell to us if they prefer. And these sites allow us to better serve our customers with our own service centres.

“We’re excited to be opening in Newcastle as we continue our mission to provide the best car buying and selling experience to consumers across the UK.”

Cazoo, which was listed on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year, has been hailed as one of the fastest growing businesses in Europe.

It has plans to add a dozen more sites to its Customer Centres network – rapidly established following its 2020 acquisition of used car supermarket group Imperial Cars – over the next 12 months.

Speaking to AM at the time of the Imperial acquisition, Chesterman denied that the move represented a “u-turn” for the online retailer, highlighting that the new Customer Centres would not display cars for sales and would serve only as handover or aftersales points.

Last month Cazoo completed its process of bringing its vehicle preparation in-house with the £70m acquisition of SMH Fleet Solutions, following its Q1 acquisition of Smart Fleet Solutions.

It also acquired used cars valuations provider Cazana for £25m.

Weeks later, Cazoo’s financial results for the first half of 2021 revealed that the £5 billion-valued online car retailer delivered a £69m adjusted EBITDA loss in the period.

Its results for a period, which saw used cars appreciating in price at an unprecedented rate due to supply shortages showed that, despite revenues up 521% to £248m as gross margin rose 9ppts, it failed to achieve profitability in the period to June 30.