Automation partner appointed for Coventry mega-hub

DHL ECOMMERCE Solutions recently announced a €560m investment plan across its UK eComm operation, DHL Parcel UK.  

The investment comes following a 40% volume uplift since the start of 2020 and soaring demand for its eComm and B2B services. 

The expansion project is designed to deliver the right infrastructure to facilitate growth as well as putting the business at the forefront of sustainable and digital logistics.

To meet this growth plan, Fives, a long-time DHL partner, will be in charge of automating the entire facility: a new 25,000 sq m hub, which will open in early 2023 at Segro Park Coventry Gateway, located south of Coventry Airport.

This mega-hub will be equipped with Fives’ latest intralogistics technologies to automatically sort items of different sizes and weights at high-speed.

“We chose Fives for its ability to really understand our business and help us build a system that can handle the majority of the products we process. Fives’ skill in getting underneath the skin of how we work really impressed us from the outset of the project. The whole team is looking forward to building a long-term relationship with Fives’ team over the coming years,” said DHL Parcel UK head of operational support Richard Wenham. 

Fives’ engineers have spent months working on a turnkey solution that best meets DHL’s requirements in terms of warehouse operations and inbound and outbound flows.

At the heart of this automation project will be 4 GENI-Belt cross-belt sorters and 2 GENI-Flex sorters, sorting items from 150mm and 50g to 2,000mm and 60kg.

Fives’ technologies will be equipped and integrated with vertical switches, swiveler wheel diverters, 3.5 km of conveyors, almost 40 high-speed induction lines and about 150 chutes, to sort 56,000 items per hour.