Spanish supermarket’s fresh food philosophy

The Guadix DC of Spanish supermarket Mercadona serves 82 stores and features a robotic system from Cimcorp for order picking of full crates of fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as meat products.

This will be, in effect, an ‘island’ of automation, albeit fully integrated with the surrounding manual operations. Product quality is a key reason behind Mercadona’s decision to implement the solution.

Francisco Lopez, Head of Logistics and Purchasing (Fruit and Vegetables), explains: “The automated solution improves efficiency and picking accuracy, bringing benefits to our customers in terms of product freshness and availability on the shelves.” 

In Mercadona’s corporate model, the satisfaction of its customers is paramount, with the consumer referred to as ‘el jefe’  (the boss).

“Our slogan is ‘Always Low Prices’,” says Francisco Lopez, “but that does not mean that we compromise on quality. In fact, for many years our philosophy has been: ‘quality doesn’t have to be more expensive’. When it comes to fresh produce and chilled foods,”a key element of quality is freshness. That’s where supply chain efficiency comes in.” 

Mercadona must remain able to reinvent itself in order to continue to succeed. 

“The only constant is change,” he says. “One of the main challenges facing the company today is how we deal with the realisation that we cannot handle fresh produce in the same way as dry produce. Perishable food has to be treated differently in the handling process – from the field to the shelf – in order to guarantee its freshness. This requires fundamental change to our supply chain. The new robotic systems we are implementing guarantee minimal handling time and therefore optimum product freshness,” he continues. 

“Our new fresh produce preparation line and picking system will allow us to prepare all orders ready for delivery in just six hours. The speed, simplicity and return on investment of the Cimcorp solution were the deciding factors for us. Of course, accuracy is fundamental too – we need to have the complete order, with no errors, delivered to each store before it opens in the morning.”

The DC features various zones – one for dry products; two for refrigerated products, at temperatures of 3ºC and 12ºC; one for frozen products at -23ºC; and a production area for bread, producing some 8,000 loaves per hour.

Cimcorp robots will automate the picking of full crates of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat products in the refrigerated zones, where around 300 SKUs will be handled in almost 30,000 crates each day. In total, the new DC will handle some 6,000 SKUs and shift more than 100,000m3 of merchandise per month. 

Another important reason for Mercadona choosing the Cimcorp solution was to protect its staff from strenuous work. The company takes the welfare and satisfaction of its employees very seriously, as evidenced by the fact that – unlike many workers in the grocery sector – all of its 70,000 staff have permanent contracts.

“The robotic system minimises the need for manual handling, protecting our employees from the strain of moving heavy crates and the associated risk of injury,” says Francisco Lopez. 

He sees potential for more co-operation with Cimcorp in the future.

“We are planning to roll out automated picking to more of our distribution centres in the next few years,” he explains, “in order to eliminate strenuous manual handling from our other facilities.” 

The ‘island of automation’ at Guadix features 8 Multipick robots handling perishable goods in two temperature zones (+3°C and +12°C).

Multipick robots combine buffer storage and order picking functions into one flexible operation. They handle, store and pick crates of product in stacks. Goods arrive at the island by conveyor in stacks of crates that contain just one SKU. A robot collects the stack and stores it on the floor within its working envelope. For picking, the robot moves to the relevant stack for the first product of the order. 

After picking the required number of crates of this SKU, the robot moves to the next product, and so on. When the stack being picked is complete, the robot either stores it for dispatch later or deposits it onto a pallet or into a roll container.

At Mercadona, the robots will pick up to 28,675 crates in a 6-hour period and will be able to store up to 30,000 crates per day. The 300 SKUs will be handled in one of two sizes of plastic crate – 600mm x 400mm and 400mm x 300mm – weighing between 5 and 250kg and with a maximum stack height of 2.2m.