Nordfrost is currently represented at 40 locations throughout Germany and, with around 3,000 employees, is the European market leader in frozen food logistics with a frozen food storage capacity of 770,000 storage spaces. In Herne, the internationally active company with headquarters in Schortens near Wilhelmshaven is now settling on the former "Unser Fritz" mine site. The 13-hectare site is in an excellent logistical location directly on the A42. A refrigerated logistics center is being built here which, when completed, will have a storage capacity of 95,000 storage spaces on a built-up area of over 34,000 square meters. This will be the largest deep-freeze warehouse in Germany - and with a very high degree of automation, one of the most efficient logistics locations anywhere. Nordfrost carried out the very extensive planning preparations required for this together with the company Malorg from Dortmund. The results of the intralogistics planning were incorporated into the construction plans, which were drawn up by the Assmann architectural office from Dortmund together with Nordfrost. The general contractors are Quakernack from Bielefeld for the civil engineering, Ludwig Freytag from Oldenburg for the structural engineering and Zimmermann Kältetechnik from Seevetal for the installation of the innovative technical systems. For the first time, Nordfrost has engaged TGW from Wels in Austria as its fourth general contractor, specialist and supplier for the fully automated systems, which include a deep-freeze high-bay warehouse and automatic order picking.

With the new building, the company is strengthening its activities in the Ruhr region, which means that it will then have 13 locations in North Rhine-Westphalia. However, the Herne site will not only play an important role regionally, but will also fulfill an important function as a central hub for the refrigeration specialist's European transport logistics network as a whole. In addition to a considerable increase in capacity, synergies will be created in the warehousing business as well as in local and long-distance transport, which will enable logistics processes to be optimized and all customer orders to be processed even more flexibly in terms of handling, storage, transport and all ancillary activities.

The total investment, including the land, amounts to around €110 million for the first construction phase, which will initially offer 70,000 pallet spaces. Of these, 28,000 storage locations in mobile racking systems will go into operation in April 2020, which can be either deep-frozen at -24°C or temperature-controlled in the plus-degree cooling range.

The high-bay warehouse with fully automated order picking will be completed in October 2020. With a volume of more than 200,000 m³ and 42,000 deep-frozen pallet spaces, it represents almost half of the site's total capacity. On the one hand, the generously dimensioned 5,700 square meter staging zones for forwarding handling will be served automatically from here. On the other hand, the planned automatic order picking system will be supplied with goods from there. The system, which is designed for extremely high picking performance and quality as well as flexibility, is another first not only at NORDFROST but in the entire frozen food service sector. Up to 3,500 packaging units per hour can be put together largely automatically in the system according to customer requirements and made available for delivery.

Herne is one of three construction projects currently underway at NORDFROST, representing a total investment volume of 270 million euros. Together with the new site in Mücke near Gießen and an expansion in the container port of Wilhelmshaven, where a fully automated deep-freeze high-bay warehouse including packaging lines is also being built, a total of 165,000 new pallet spaces will be created, which corresponds to a 22% increase in Nordfrost's capacity.