Parcel firm to automate terminal

THIS IS the first time Helthjem will introduce automated sortation.

Helthjem's rapid expansion – driven by the increase in eComm – has necessitated this automation investment, which will help maintain its service levels and optimise operations. The new parcel terminal in Vestby in the South of Norway consists of a production hall of approximately 12,000 sq m plus an office department with support and administration functions.

The new system is designed to handle 50 million parcels per year and help Helthjem combat labour shortages, as the design includes automatic cage tippers and singulation of parcels that make Helthjem less dependent on having a large team of operators to manually place each parcel correctly. The Beumer system will take care of most of the handling, from the moment parcels are emptied to the system until they are sorted for further optimised distribution.

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The Beumer system will largely eliminate manual handling, reducing the number of touch points from four to five for every parcel to only once for some of them. This will have a huge effect on speed and accuracy of throughput.

Helthjem’s director for e-commerce Anders Lunde Angen, says: “This is our first venture into automation after years of purely manual operation, but any concerns we had were eased by the high level of competence shown by the Beumer team. The system will enable us to expand our offering rapidly and we anticipate a reasonably fast ROI. During the Covid pandemic we saw the consumer-to-consumer sector grow by 500% and we continue to believe in the growth of e-commerce – and even more in the consumer-to-consumer business, for which we offer no-fuss delivery door-to-door by means of nothing but a handwritten code.”

The system will open in the summer of 2023. It will initially have an operational capacity of 15,000 parcels per hour, with the ability to expand built into the design.

For more information visit www.beumer.com