bpost group subsidiary Active Ants has moved into a new-build fulfilment centre in Roosendaal, where people and robots work alongside each other. Active Ants will also open a branch in Belgium in 2021, as bpost group continues to expand its e-commerce logistics services in Belgium and beyond.
“Storage, picking and sorting are all fully automated. Employees form an efficient team with robots for the order picking. The return flow and the receipt of goods continue to be processed manually,” said Jeroen Dekker, managing partner at Active Ants.
65 autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) bring empty boxes to the employees, who fill them with the goods brought by other robots. The AMRs then transport the boxes to the packaging machines, where they are sealed and weighed. The AMRs then sort the sealed boxes by shipper.
Around 40 robots are tasked with picking goods from the storage bins and bringing them to employees. This goods-to-person system has been designed to have a very small footprint. According to bpost, the system stores up to six times more goods per square metre and the robots generate their own energy, minimising the use of mains power.
As its subsidiaries continue to grow, bpost is increasingly active in e-commerce logistics worldwide. This enables the company to expand around the globe.
The opening of the new facility in Roosendaal brings the total number of bpost group fulfilment centres in Europe up to eight. There are two Active Ants sites in the Netherlands and Radial has six facilities in Europe: one each in the Netherlands, the UK, Italy and Poland, and two in Germany. They form a network of centres close to customers, bpost group’s response to the increasing demand for logistics services from e-commerce companies.
Active Ants will launch operations at an existing site in Boom, located between Antwerp and Mechelen, in the spring of 2021.
Source: bpost
