New Zealand’s largest supermarket distribution centre opens in the South Island
Foodstuffs SI
The Prime Minister, the Right Honourable John Key, was on
hand today to open Foodstuffs South Island's new ambient
distribution centre (DC) in Hornby, Christchurch. The greenfield
project essentially connects an additional 31,587m2 to the existing
14,000m2 ambient warehouse at Hornby and consolidates operations
from the old Papanui DC in Christchurch. This DC sits alongside a
4,000m2 temperature controlled DC already present on the
site.
"The new DC will be servicing 300 New World, PAK'nSAVE,
Four Square and On the Spot stores throughout the South Island,"
says John Mullins, General Manager Supply Chain, Foodstuffs South
Island Ltd. "From as far afield as Collingwood and Stewart Island
the distribution network sees 200 trucks leave the DC every day and
travel a massive six million kilometres around the country each
year."
"Across the new ambient section of the site 400 staff
distribute over 450,000 cartons of product out to our supermarkets
24 hours a day, seven days a week," says Mullins. "The temperature
controlled warehouse adds another 210,000 cartons each week, with
the total number of cartons distributed rising to as many as one
million at busy times such as Christmas and Easter. No easy feat by
any means."
According to Mullins 70% of goods supplied to the
supermarkets comes from the DC with the remaining 30% going direct
from suppliers.
"An effective supply chain requires multiple components to
work in harmony and we would be remiss in not taking this
opportunity to thank our suppliers who have worked with us
throughout the development of Hornby and transition from Papanui.
Getting the new DC stocked and the state of the art fulfilment
software functioning correctly was always going to be a challenge
and we wouldn't have been able to be so successful if we didn't
have the support and cooperation of our supplier community,"
acknowledges Mullins.
"Additionally, our distribution centre staff have played a
very important role in the set-up of the new DC, in particular
assisting with the transition of inventory and order picking from
the older Papanui site to Hornby."
The relocation of 200 Papanui staff across town to the new
site at Hornby in late 2014 was a great achievement with staff now
enjoying the benefits of a new purpose built building. Highlights
include a full service cafeteria and modern amenities such as
exclusive use of an onsite gym.
Constructed by Calder Stewart Industries and designed by
local engineering firm, Engenium, the building underwent a rigorous
design process to ensure it achieved the highest earthquake
building standards. Adding to this the regular earthquakes
experienced by the Canterbury region meant it was important to
design a building that delivered the safest pallet racking solution
possible.
"We enlisted the expertise of Dematic, a material handling
and logistics automation company based out of Luxembourg with a
manufacturing plant in Sydney, to install the ColbyRACK storage
system which is purpose built to deal with the forces generated by
seismic events," says Mullins." Through close consultation with the
structural engineer Dematic were able to ensure that the specially
constructed post-tensioned concrete floor did not conflict with the
positioning of the racking systems seismic base plates, thus
ensuring the racking system will behave predictably during
earthquake events."
Foodstuffs South Island has also worked with Dematic to
install a state of the art order picking system, or tool to 'pick'
products from the DC shelves for distribution out to the
supermarkets. Dematic's PickDIRECTOR includes a semi-automatic
'pick module' which handles all split case and small carton order
requirements via a series of zone routing and sortation lanes over
both the ground and mezzanine floor levels within the DC. Orders
are picked into collapsible tote's for distribution to stores
across the South Island.
Downloads
Hornby DC (1602kb)
