Ardagh Group has today announced that it has invested 2.4m in a state-of-the-art warehousing facility at its Deventer production facility in the Netherlands. This investment includes the very latest in stock management solutions delivering an enhanced service to the customers it serves.
At the forefront of this investment is a fleet of ‘fully automated’ forklift trucks. Known also as ‘Automated Guided Vehicles’ (AGVs), they are controlled by advanced software and manage the operation of the 7,500 sq. meter warehouse in a full lights out environment.
The trucks are designed to take 4 pallets at a time from the production area to the warehouse for storage and then take them back out again to one of the 5 loading bays for shipment. This project is a collaboration between Ardagh Group and AGVE, a global supplier of AGV-systems. The system has been designed to stack the pallets 4 high, which equates to 12 metres, in deep bays. This is the first time such stack configuration has been automated in Europe.
The new warehouse is attached to the DWI (Drawn, Walled and Ironed) metal production facility which produces 2 piece food cans at an impressive rate of more than 100.000 cans per hour.
Jan de Bruin, Plant Manager of the Deventer Production Facility comments: “Our new warehouse, adjacent to the production facility, gives us and our customers a more efficient, smoother, streamlined logistical service.”
“It is longer than a football pitch (or the equivalent size of 40 indoor tennis courts), is equipped with the latest software and hardware systems to monitor movements, and, we calculate, will remove 12 tonnes of CO2 through fewer truck movements to our previous external warehouses.”
The warehouse will be officially opened by the Chief Procurement Officer of Ardagh Group at a special ceremony on the 24th of March.
