“Never before has there been such a marked difference between the requirements for a warehouse and the needs of a fulfilment centre.”
Demand for fulfilment is rising rapidly, however, developers are still building big footprint structures that are very tall, says Martin O’Grady, director, Unipart Supply Chain Consultancy.
"That’s fine for traditional warehousing needs, dealing with pallets and cases, but when we look at a fulfilment operation where the emphasis is on picking operations, and where the high bay bulk store may only occupy 30% of the overall space requirement, then we are having to maximise the cube of the building by putting in costly mezzanine floors.
"A future vision may be to have a campus development where there is a central, shared multi-user automated high-bay warehouse serving a community of low to medium height buildings which are geared to the needs of singles or few order fulfilment."
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