The specialist for warehousing, freight forwarding, logistics, customs clearance and logistics IT solutions with over 950 employees at several locations is further expanding its international network. The latest automated deep-freeze high-bay warehouse will go into operation in January 2022: with Cool Port 2 at City Terminal Rotterdam, Kloosterboer will initially serve its anchor customer Lamb Weston / Meijer, a manufacturer of frozen potato products. The customer has the logistics service provider handle the export products of its Dutch production sites via the port of Rotterdam. In future, these goods will be delivered to Cool Port 2, loaded onto containers and transported by barge to the container terminals on the Maasvlakte.

Planning and automation from a single source

The six-aisle, fully automated deep-freeze high-bay warehouse is 69 meters long, 139 meters wide, 41 meters high and has 60,000 rack spaces. From autumn 2020 to summer 2021, 4,100 tons of steel were installed in the compact warehouse with its self-supporting silo design. From June, intralogistics specialist Westfalia, which planned the warehouse, will be installing its intralogistics technology to automate the daily throughput of thousands of pallets. It is producing and installing a total of six of its storage and retrieval machines and conveyor technology, including PLC control. Westfalia manufactures the stacker cranes and conveyor units at its headquarters in Borgholzhausen, East Westphalia, plans and programs the control system and thus keeps the supply chains short and stable.

"We are implementing a tailor-made, efficient and highly available logistics system on just under one hectare in the port of Rotterdam. Pallets are delivered by self-unloading or conventional trucks and are automatically transported from the dispatch hall to the deep-freeze high-bay warehouse via roller conveyors, turntables and airlocks," explains John van Dijk, the project manager responsible at Westfalia. Sensors check the contours of the loaded Euro and industrial pallets and sort out faulty, damaged load carriers prematurely. This maximizes the reliability of the system.

Gentle throughput of hundreds of pallets per hour

In the high-performance deep-freeze warehouse, the SRMs take over and store and retrieve hundreds of heavily loaded pallets every hour at temperatures as low as -25° C. The intralogistics general contractor has designed its patented Satellite load handling device specifically for multi-deep storage and developed it further over decades. Each SRM stores pallets on both sides in multi-deep rows. These channels can be connected for servicing.

Euro and industrial pallets usually bend when heavily loaded, and the quality can vary greatly. The Satellite load handling attachment accesses profiles that support and protect the pallets. This design significantly increases their service life and prevents load carriers from bending, jamming and blocking the system. The sequencing buffer supports the immense throughput.

Compact storage with enormous loading speed

"The warehouse layout is specially tailored to our client," says van Dijk. "Kloosterboer has complete control over the material flow. This transparency is an outstanding advantage for Kloosterboer's customers. According to the order entered in the system, the goods are taken from the warehouse, transported by conveyor system to the super-fast interim storage area and from there to the dispatch zone and made available in the exact order in which they are to be loaded onto the trucks at the docks."

"The SRMs store the goods unsorted and in a route-efficient manner, only in the buffers are they sequenced to suit the container," says Thomas Schoch, International Sales at Westfalia, describing the high-performance system. "Channel storage and high-performance loading buffers combine compact storage and capacity with enormous loading speed. They complement each other perfectly."

Sustainable, cost- and energy-efficient

With its energy-efficient, economical satellite and sequencing buffer technology as well as modern deep-freeze system components, Westfalia contributes to efficiency: According to the company, the deep-freeze high-bay warehouse is around 35-45 percent more energy efficient than a conventional deep-freeze warehouse. The building is currently being constructed in accordance with Breeam requirements and is designed to support up to 2,700 solar modules for energy self-sufficiency if required.

The partnership between the two companies has already proven itself in three joint logistics projects. In 2018, the general contractor had already been commissioned with the Kloosterboer deep-freeze warehouse in Lelystad, a deep-freeze high-bay warehouse for the first customer McCain. In 2003 and 2010, Westfalia planned and technologically implemented deep-freeze channel warehouses in the Kloosterboer Delta Terminal Rotterdam Maasvlakte and in Harnes, France. After Cool Port 2, further projects are planned and commissioned with Kloosterboer.

All-in-one solution for material flow control and warehouse management

On the software side, new and existing systems were consolidated onto the current Savanna.NET Warehouse Execution System (WES) from Westfalia, which will also manage the entire warehouse management and material flow control in Cool Port 2 and, as an all-in-one software solution, combines comprehensive functions of warehouse management software and warehouse control software. Despite corona restrictions, the warehouse in the Delta Terminal recently switched to the new WES on time in December 2020 - Westfalia put it into operation remotely from Borgholzhausen.

"The Warehouse Execution System is also a customized interface for Kloosterboer's customers and offers maximum transparency of the company's own logistics services," explains Thomas Schoch. "By placing all of Kloosterboer's automated deep-freeze warehouses on one system level, they are effectively networked. Processes that are defined for one of the warehouse systems can be implemented more quickly for the other systems controlled by Savanna.NET."

Trusting cooperation

"The Cool Port 2 deep-freeze high-bay warehouse offers our customers a strategic location for multimodal transportation," says Nicolas Robin, Operational Project & Implementation Manager at Kloosterboer, describing the Dutch logistics service provider's project objectives. "With the automated deep-freeze high-bay warehouse, we want to optimize the efficiency of our warehouse around the clock and offer our customers the highest level of service. With this system, we are maximizing our efficiency and service level. It improves our work thanks to its high performance, availability and flexibility."

For him, the renewed collaboration with Westfalia Logistics Solutions Europe was a clear decision: "Westfalia has been a long-standing partner for us for our automated deep-freeze high-bay warehouses with multi-deep channels. These solutions are tried and tested - we have already implemented three compact deep-freeze warehouses together. Westfalia's solutions and approach meet our high standards and requirements," says Nicolas Robin. "At the same time, our companies have jointly increased their expertise and further improved their standards through this cooperation. We work closely together in assigned project teams. At Westfalia, a team of IT specialists and a project manager are dedicated to the Kloosterboer projects. They know our requirements and processes inside out. This really helps to ensure the success of the projects."

Especially in times of travel restrictions, the trusting cooperation has proven its worth, says the Operational Manager. The perfect example of this is "the conversion of the Warehouse Execution System at the Kloosterboer Delta Terminal in December 2020 under the restrictions imposed by Covid-19: the tests and commissioning of the software were successfully carried out remotely by Westfalia from Germany and by the Kloosterboer team on site at the location."

The article appeared in materialfluss 10/21.