BOOTS is to consider a partial sell-off of its Nottingham headquarters site after its eventual sale of Boots Healthcare International (BHI), the Strepsils to Nurofen maker.

The health and beauty specialist said that once BHI had been sold — a move expected in the next few months — it was possible that up to 40 per cent of the 360-acre site would be left empty.

The prospect has prompted Boots to seek property consultants to advise it on the future of the site.

Boots insists that it is committed to keeping its headquarters on the site at Beeston, Nottingham, which was first acquired by Jesse Boot, the retailer’s founder, in the 1920s.

A spokesman said: “This should not be taken as a lack of commitment to the site, or Nottingham, but in the spirit of being modern and efficient it is good for us to look at how best to utilise the site.”

The spokesman said that there was “no point” in Boots assessing the future of the site until after the sale of BHI had been completed and the buyers’ intentions for the future of the manufacturing units at Beeston had become clear.

Boots is engaged in the process of selling non-core assets. It recently finalised the £298 million sale and leaseback of a group of 315 smaller stores and has also sold its dentistry business.

Reckitt Benckiser, GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer, the pharmaceutical companies, are thought to be front-runners in the £1.2 billion auction for BHI and it is possible that these companies would choose to relocate production elsewhere.

At the same time, three buildings on the site are already being vacated and mothballed in the aftermath of 1,500 head-office redundancies at Boots in the past 18 months.

Boots is expected to look at a wide variety of possibilities for the future of the Beeston site, including a sale and leaseback, a partial sale or redevelopment.

Property consultants said the land could fetch between £330,000 and £1 million an acre depending on the kind of development carried out on it and the cost of preparing the land.

Richard Baker, chief executive, has suggested that part of the site could be turned into a Jesse Boot enterprise park.

However, some buildings on the site, including the Grade I-listed D10 factory block, a pioneer of modernist glass and concrete built in 1933 by Sir Owen Williams, have protected status and may be difficult to redevelop.

Another issue is that some parts of the site historically used for pharmaceutical production will need an environmental study and perhaps a clean-up operation before a change of use can be allowed.

An analyst said that it appeared that Boots could raise more than £50 million from a sale of the spare land. He said: “Boots has already got too much space in Nottingham and this would unlock value that it could use to develop other parts of the business. Otherwise it is just sitting on the balance sheet doing nothing.”

Interest in BHI has so far been intense, with some analysts suggesting that the eventual winner might have to pay in excess of £1.8 billion to snap up the highly prized business.

The unit, which generated sales of about £500 million last year, was put up for sale with a £1.2 billion price tag in April.

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