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Month: November 2021

UK forklift orders soaring

Posted on by David Priestman

Rising confidence as business looks for a swift recovery from a succession of pandemic-induced lockdowns is generating unprecedented demand for new lift trucks across nearly all sectors of the market. However, as new data from the UK Material Handling Association (UKMHA) shows, manufacturers are struggling to keep pace with demand due to the ongoing shortage of critical components.

Following a 24% decline in bookings during 2020, orders have surged this year, with latest estimates predicting a 38% increase by year-end. Such a figure represents a 5.7% increase on the figures for pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

With industry demand expected to stay strong into next year, experts at Oxford Economics have predicted in their Autumn Economic Forecast, which has been produced for UKMHA constituent, BITA, a further 6.5% growth in bookings for 2022.

However, while deliveries have also recovered – currently hovering around levels seen in 2016, the economists have predicted supply issues could continue to disrupt delivery schedules well into next year before eventually subsiding.

“While shipments have staged a strong recovery, they are lagging well behind the growth in bookings,” states the new report. “This is natural due to lead times between bookings and shipping, but it likely also reflects wider supply chain issues that are affecting industries this year. We expect supply chain issues to persist well into next year, but they will eventually improve, and companies will continue to adapt. Therefore, the backlog will continue to rise into next year.”

The situation is by no means unique to lift trucks; virtually all aspects of the manufacturing industry are currently being disrupted due to the shortage of critical components. The situation is compounded by labour shortages, escalating fuel and energy costs, and raw material costs.

Nevertheless, surging consumer demand continues to drive the market and this is expected to remain the case during 2022, despite inflationary pressures.

One of the primary beneficiaries of the current situation has been the Counterbalance sector, which has witnessed a startling recovery. Prior to the pandemic, counterbalance bookings were in decline, falling more than 5% in 2019, with the weakness most pronounced in Class 4/5. The pandemic exacerbated the trend, with Classes 1 and 4/5 subsiding by 21% and 34% respectively last year, with the decline most prominent in the first half of the year.

Bookings staged a strong recovery throughout 2021 as pandemic restrictions eased. All classes were up well above 100% in the second quarter, while bookings for Class 1 continued to grow in Q3 but pulled back for Class 4/5 from the levels seen in the previous three months.

With industrial production predicted to rise by 5.6% this year, driven by strong consumer demand – a trend anticipated to continue into 2022, demand for the trucks is expected to remain high.

“Overall, we expect counterbalance orders to rise 33% this year. In 2022 we expect bookings to exceed 2019 levels after rising 17%,” adds the forecast.

If anything, the picture within the warehouse sector is even more positive, as growing consumer demand again influenced the market. The Oxford Economics report predicts e-commerce sales are likely to remain high going into 2022, relative to pre-Covid levels, despite shops reopening.

“We expect bookings will rise 42.5% in 2021 which will bring the sector 15% above 2019 levels,” states the report.

Tim Waples (pictured), CEO of UKMHA, said: “While these results reflect the continuous growth trend for 2021, they will make pleasant reading for our manufacturers and dealers, who have endured a torrid 18 months due to the pandemic.

“If the predictions are correct and growth can be maintained into next year, then the UK material handling sector is looking at a very prosperous 2022. It is all the more disappointing therefore, that supply issues are disrupting shipment of new trucks. Let us hope the situation can be resolved sooner rather than later – for everyone’s benefit.”

UK forklift orders soaring

Posted on by David Priestman

Rising confidence as business looks for a swift recovery from a succession of pandemic-induced lockdowns is generating unprecedented demand for new lift trucks across nearly all sectors of the market. However, as new data from the UK Material Handling Association (UKMHA) shows, manufacturers are struggling to keep pace with demand due to the ongoing shortage of critical components.

Following a 24% decline in bookings during 2020, orders have surged this year, with latest estimates predicting a 38% increase by year-end. Such a figure represents a 5.7% increase on the figures for pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

With industry demand expected to stay strong into next year, experts at Oxford Economics have predicted in their Autumn Economic Forecast, which has been produced for UKMHA constituent, BITA, a further 6.5% growth in bookings for 2022.

However, while deliveries have also recovered – currently hovering around levels seen in 2016, the economists have predicted supply issues could continue to disrupt delivery schedules well into next year before eventually subsiding.

“While shipments have staged a strong recovery, they are lagging well behind the growth in bookings,” states the new report. “This is natural due to lead times between bookings and shipping, but it likely also reflects wider supply chain issues that are affecting industries this year. We expect supply chain issues to persist well into next year, but they will eventually improve, and companies will continue to adapt. Therefore, the backlog will continue to rise into next year.”

The situation is by no means unique to lift trucks; virtually all aspects of the manufacturing industry are currently being disrupted due to the shortage of critical components. The situation is compounded by labour shortages, escalating fuel and energy costs, and raw material costs.

Nevertheless, surging consumer demand continues to drive the market and this is expected to remain the case during 2022, despite inflationary pressures.

One of the primary beneficiaries of the current situation has been the Counterbalance sector, which has witnessed a startling recovery. Prior to the pandemic, counterbalance bookings were in decline, falling more than 5% in 2019, with the weakness most pronounced in Class 4/5. The pandemic exacerbated the trend, with Classes 1 and 4/5 subsiding by 21% and 34% respectively last year, with the decline most prominent in the first half of the year.

Bookings staged a strong recovery throughout 2021 as pandemic restrictions eased. All classes were up well above 100% in the second quarter, while bookings for Class 1 continued to grow in Q3 but pulled back for Class 4/5 from the levels seen in the previous three months.

With industrial production predicted to rise by 5.6% this year, driven by strong consumer demand – a trend anticipated to continue into 2022, demand for the trucks is expected to remain high.

“Overall, we expect counterbalance orders to rise 33% this year. In 2022 we expect bookings to exceed 2019 levels after rising 17%,” adds the forecast.

If anything, the picture within the warehouse sector is even more positive, as growing consumer demand again influenced the market. The Oxford Economics report predicts e-commerce sales are likely to remain high going into 2022, relative to pre-Covid levels, despite shops reopening.

“We expect bookings will rise 42.5% in 2021 which will bring the sector 15% above 2019 levels,” states the report.

Tim Waples (pictured), CEO of UKMHA, said: “While these results reflect the continuous growth trend for 2021, they will make pleasant reading for our manufacturers and dealers, who have endured a torrid 18 months due to the pandemic.

“If the predictions are correct and growth can be maintained into next year, then the UK material handling sector is looking at a very prosperous 2022. It is all the more disappointing therefore, that supply issues are disrupting shipment of new trucks. Let us hope the situation can be resolved sooner rather than later – for everyone’s benefit.”

Dunelm ready for DIRFT move

Posted on by Keith McKinley

Dunelm Group Plc is set to move into its new Daventry (UK) warehouse at Prologis RFI DIRFT this December, creating up to 70 new jobs in the local area by the end of January 2022.  The new site will be helping the retailer meet customer demand ahead of the festive period and then from January will be become a key element in the growth of Dunelm’s furniture business and providing better delivery service levels.

The move supports Dunelm’s focus on innovating and improving its customer proposition, as well as the growth in home delivery and click & collect operations that resulted from the pandemic.

Dunelm is one of the country’s leading homeware retailers, operating 175 shops across the UK. The company has taken a 10-year lease on the new logistics building at Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) in the East Midlands, the leading rail served logistics park in the UK, which will be home to the Dunelm Home Delivery network and furniture range.

Classed as a nationally significant infrastructure project, DIRFT is one of the most successful intermodal (road/rail) logistics parks in the UK. From its location in the logistics ‘golden triangle’, at the heart of the UK’s motorway and rail network, the site has excellent road links to the M1 and M6 motorways, and to the West Coast Main Line. Home to household names such as Sainsbury’s and Tesco, the site’s transport links have played a significant role in keeping goods and services flowing around the country during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to do so during the current supply chain crisis.

“We’ve worked with Dunelm for a long time, and seeing this project come to completion is testament to the strength of our relationship,” said Tom Price, capital deployment and leasing director at Prologis UK. “The new facility will be pivotal in helping the business further grow its online retail operations and create a significant number of jobs for the local area. DIRFT continues to be an incredibly popular prospect for businesses looking to harness the power of multimodal freight and further extensions to the site will provide even more opportunities for businesses which want to strengthen their presence in the golden triangle.”

Dunelm’s new building will also reflect the company’s ambitious targets around sustainability and carbon reduction, with an EPC ‘A24’ rating, a BREEAM rating of ‘excellent’ and features such as 15% roof lights, rainwater harvesting, and LED lighting. The building has also had its environmental credentials certified by The Planet Mark and is mitigating 100% of the embodied carbon involved in its construction. Thanks to Prologis’ partnership with climate action charity, Cool Earth, the construction of DIRFT III DC4 will help protect 136 acres of rainforest, over 30,000 trees, and support 652 people in Sololo, Southern Papua New Guinea.

Richard Street, Supply Chain Development Director, Dunelm Group PLC, said: “Our new DIRFT warehouse facility is an important move for Dunelm – not only is the location excellent for better serving our customer needs but the new site will make a significant contribution to our improving our environmental footprint.”

Dunelm ready for DIRFT move

Posted on by David Priestman

Dunelm Group Plc is set to move into its new Daventry (UK) warehouse at Prologis RFI DIRFT this December, creating up to 70 new jobs in the local area by the end of January 2022.  The new site will be helping the retailer meet customer demand ahead of the festive period and then from January will be become a key element in the growth of Dunelm’s furniture business and providing better delivery service levels.

The move supports Dunelm’s focus on innovating and improving its customer proposition, as well as the growth in home delivery and click & collect operations that resulted from the pandemic.

Dunelm is one of the country’s leading homeware retailers, operating 175 shops across the UK. The company has taken a 10-year lease on the new logistics building at Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) in the East Midlands, the leading rail served logistics park in the UK, which will be home to the Dunelm Home Delivery network and furniture range.

Classed as a nationally significant infrastructure project, DIRFT is one of the most successful intermodal (road/rail) logistics parks in the UK. From its location in the logistics ‘golden triangle’, at the heart of the UK’s motorway and rail network, the site has excellent road links to the M1 and M6 motorways, and to the West Coast Main Line. Home to household names such as Sainsbury’s and Tesco, the site’s transport links have played a significant role in keeping goods and services flowing around the country during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to do so during the current supply chain crisis.

“We’ve worked with Dunelm for a long time, and seeing this project come to completion is testament to the strength of our relationship,” said Tom Price, capital deployment and leasing director at Prologis UK. “The new facility will be pivotal in helping the business further grow its online retail operations and create a significant number of jobs for the local area. DIRFT continues to be an incredibly popular prospect for businesses looking to harness the power of multimodal freight and further extensions to the site will provide even more opportunities for businesses which want to strengthen their presence in the golden triangle.”

Dunelm’s new building will also reflect the company’s ambitious targets around sustainability and carbon reduction, with an EPC ‘A24’ rating, a BREEAM rating of ‘excellent’ and features such as 15% roof lights, rainwater harvesting, and LED lighting. The building has also had its environmental credentials certified by The Planet Mark and is mitigating 100% of the embodied carbon involved in its construction. Thanks to Prologis’ partnership with climate action charity, Cool Earth, the construction of DIRFT III DC4 will help protect 136 acres of rainforest, over 30,000 trees, and support 652 people in Sololo, Southern Papua New Guinea.

Richard Street, Supply Chain Development Director, Dunelm Group PLC, said: “Our new DIRFT warehouse facility is an important move for Dunelm – not only is the location excellent for better serving our customer needs but the new site will make a significant contribution to our improving our environmental footprint.”

Rapid Order Processing at Very’s Automated DC

Posted on by David Priestman

Advanced automation technology from Knapp is helping The Very Group to fulfil customer orders in just 30 minutes at Skygate, its new distribution centre in the East Midlands (UK).

Launched on the day that the UK’s first lockdown was announced in March 2020, the 850,000 sq ft facility has secured a number of benefits for the online retailer and its customers, including greater product availability, faster refunds and enhanced ability to handle peak trading periods.

“A fast, seamless fulfilment operation is vital for great customer experience, and that’s what we focused on when developing Skygate’s highly automated technology,” commented Phil Hackney, Chief Operating Officer at The Very Group. “Throughout the pandemic, that technology has helped us to manage huge volumes of orders. It also enabled us to bring all of our clothing and footwear returns under one roof for the first time and means we’re well positioned for future growth.”

Despite a surge in orders during its first year as the pandemic fuelled demand for e-commerce, Skygate managed to deliver the performance required by Very. The automated picking, sortation and packaging technology from KNAPP means that orders can be ready for dispatch within 30 minutes, compared to around four hours at Very’s previous fulfilment centres. The fastest order to date, processed in July 2021, was ready for dispatch in just 17 minutes.

Operating 24/7, Skygate has processed over 40 million items since its launch and has significant potential for future expansion. The efficiency of processes at the facility, combined with the consolidation of three sites into one fulfilment and returns centre, will contribute up to £25m in efficiency savings per year for The Very Group. Skygate’s central location – close to the M1 motorway and adjacent to East Midlands Airport – combined with the on-site rail freight terminal will save Very an estimated one million road miles a year.

Designed for peaks

With Skygate responsible for the fulfilment of 95% of the Group’s customer orders, KNAPP worked closely with Very to ensure that the automation would be able to handle peak volumes with the required speed and accuracy. The logistics technology enables the pre-picking of orders on high-traffic days, which helped Very to cope with record-breaking Christmas and Black Friday trading in 2020. Sales for Very.co.uk increased by over 25% year-on-year in the seven weeks to Christmas 2020, with Skygate processing an impressive 3.9 million orders during this period, peaking at 265 orders per minute.

Key to both rapid order fulfilment and efficient returns processing at Skygate is KNAPP’s EcoPocket system. This pocket sorter technology uses a matrix sortation algorithm to arrange products in RFID-enabled pockets into the correct sequence to fulfil customer orders at the packing stations.

Items are placed in the pockets at a series of workstations, where totes of product arrive automatically from KNAPP’s OSR Shuttle Evo storage system. Taking an item from a tote, the operator scans it and drops it into a pocket with a single swipe action.

One of the largest shuttle systems in Europe, the automatic store features over 400 shuttles and provides almost 640,000 storage locations. Combined with 120,000 pockets in the EcoPocket system and 26,000 pallet locations in the manual store, Skygate houses an

One-touch returns handling

The automated handling solution at Skygate also enables one-touch processing of returns, with products available for resale within 30 minutes and customer refunds provided faster than ever before. Returns are prioritized, with two-thirds leaving the site within 24 hours and the overwhelming majority within three days.

A vast dynamic buffer of EcoPockets on the third mezzanine level of the warehouse makes returns processing a breeze and gives Skygate the capacity to handle 80,000 returned items per day.

Also featuring a dispatch sorter with 96 destination chutes, the automated logistics solution is controlled by KNAPP’s KiSoft suite of software, comprising Warehouse Management System (WMS), Warehouse Control System (WCS) and machine control systems for seamless integration.

“We are extremely proud to have developed this brand-new distribution centre from concept to reality in just three years,” commented Anton Tschurwald, Vice President Retail Solutions for KNAPP AG. “A strong spirit of partnership with the customer meant that Skygate was delivered within budget and on time, despite going live during the COVID-19 lockdown.”

To keep the complex project on schedule despite the lockdown restrictions, KNAPP worked with Very to develop – within just a week – the infrastructure and processes to continue start-up of the system by the British team with support from technicians working remotely from Austria. “The significant challenges were overcome through a potent combination of teamwork and technology,” said Tschurwald.

To ensure maximum system uptime, a 33-strong team of KNAPP Customer Service technicians is based permanently at Skygate, carrying out comprehensive preventive maintenance and dealing quickly with any issues that arise.

Rapid Order Processing at Very’s Automated DC

Posted on by David Priestman

Advanced automation technology from Knapp is helping The Very Group to fulfil customer orders in just 30 minutes at Skygate, its new distribution centre in the East Midlands (UK).

Launched on the day that the UK’s first lockdown was announced in March 2020, the 850,000 sq ft facility has secured a number of benefits for the online retailer and its customers, including greater product availability, faster refunds and enhanced ability to handle peak trading periods.

“A fast, seamless fulfilment operation is vital for great customer experience, and that’s what we focused on when developing Skygate’s highly automated technology,” commented Phil Hackney, Chief Operating Officer at The Very Group. “Throughout the pandemic, that technology has helped us to manage huge volumes of orders. It also enabled us to bring all of our clothing and footwear returns under one roof for the first time and means we’re well positioned for future growth.”

Despite a surge in orders during its first year as the pandemic fuelled demand for e-commerce, Skygate managed to deliver the performance required by Very. The automated picking, sortation and packaging technology from KNAPP means that orders can be ready for dispatch within 30 minutes, compared to around four hours at Very’s previous fulfilment centres. The fastest order to date, processed in July 2021, was ready for dispatch in just 17 minutes.

Operating 24/7, Skygate has processed over 40 million items since its launch and has significant potential for future expansion. The efficiency of processes at the facility, combined with the consolidation of three sites into one fulfilment and returns centre, will contribute up to £25m in efficiency savings per year for The Very Group. Skygate’s central location – close to the M1 motorway and adjacent to East Midlands Airport – combined with the on-site rail freight terminal will save Very an estimated one million road miles a year.

Designed for peaks

With Skygate responsible for the fulfilment of 95% of the Group’s customer orders, KNAPP worked closely with Very to ensure that the automation would be able to handle peak volumes with the required speed and accuracy. The logistics technology enables the pre-picking of orders on high-traffic days, which helped Very to cope with record-breaking Christmas and Black Friday trading in 2020. Sales for Very.co.uk increased by over 25% year-on-year in the seven weeks to Christmas 2020, with Skygate processing an impressive 3.9 million orders during this period, peaking at 265 orders per minute.

Key to both rapid order fulfilment and efficient returns processing at Skygate is KNAPP’s EcoPocket system. This pocket sorter technology uses a matrix sortation algorithm to arrange products in RFID-enabled pockets into the correct sequence to fulfil customer orders at the packing stations.

Items are placed in the pockets at a series of workstations, where totes of product arrive automatically from KNAPP’s OSR Shuttle Evo storage system. Taking an item from a tote, the operator scans it and drops it into a pocket with a single swipe action.

One of the largest shuttle systems in Europe, the automatic store features over 400 shuttles and provides almost 640,000 storage locations. Combined with 120,000 pockets in the EcoPocket system and 26,000 pallet locations in the manual store, Skygate houses an

One-touch returns handling

The automated handling solution at Skygate also enables one-touch processing of returns, with products available for resale within 30 minutes and customer refunds provided faster than ever before. Returns are prioritized, with two-thirds leaving the site within 24 hours and the overwhelming majority within three days.

A vast dynamic buffer of EcoPockets on the third mezzanine level of the warehouse makes returns processing a breeze and gives Skygate the capacity to handle 80,000 returned items per day.

Also featuring a dispatch sorter with 96 destination chutes, the automated logistics solution is controlled by KNAPP’s KiSoft suite of software, comprising Warehouse Management System (WMS), Warehouse Control System (WCS) and machine control systems for seamless integration.

“We are extremely proud to have developed this brand-new distribution centre from concept to reality in just three years,” commented Anton Tschurwald, Vice President Retail Solutions for KNAPP AG. “A strong spirit of partnership with the customer meant that Skygate was delivered within budget and on time, despite going live during the COVID-19 lockdown.”

To keep the complex project on schedule despite the lockdown restrictions, KNAPP worked with Very to develop – within just a week – the infrastructure and processes to continue start-up of the system by the British team with support from technicians working remotely from Austria. “The significant challenges were overcome through a potent combination of teamwork and technology,” said Tschurwald.

To ensure maximum system uptime, a 33-strong team of KNAPP Customer Service technicians is based permanently at Skygate, carrying out comprehensive preventive maintenance and dealing quickly with any issues that arise.

FM Logistic expands Bauhaus contract

Posted on by David Priestman

Third-party logistics company FM Logistic has renewed and expanded its e-commerce logistics contract with the German DIY retailer Bauhaus. The new contract has led to doubling the size of the Lovosice fulfilment centre, in the Czech Republic, from 30,000 to 60,000 sq m.

FM Logistic is managing Bauhaus’ online orders and distribution to consumers in Austria and Germany from Lovosice, a Czech town located near the German border. The cooperation started in 2018. Under the new contract, FM Logistic will handle a broader range of Bauhaus products. Bauhaus is indeed planning to bring the range of products stored in Lovosice from 30,000 to 100,000 SKU by 2030.

“In 2020, we handled 66% more orders than the year before. In 2021, we expect volume to increase by another 34%, which brings us to more than one million orders per year. To support this growth, we have been closely cooperating with Bauhaus to co-design and automate warehouse processes,” says Guilhem Vicaire, Business Solutions Director Central Europe at FM Logistic.

The contract covers further investments in automation. FM Logistic and Bauhaus have set up an on-demand packaging machine to produce the right size box for non-conveyable items. They have also invested in automated sorters and a goods-to-person picking system to improve order processing.

The additional warehousing space was delivered by P3 Logistic Parks. It was inaugurated in October 2021 by Johannes Wechsler, SVP E-Commerce & Digital at Bauhaus, and Jean-Christophe Machet, FM Logistic’s CEO.

“We decided to work with FM Logistic in 2018. Together we have succeeded in setting up an important link in our e-commerce logistics chain. We see FM Logistic as a strategic partner. That is why we have decided to extend our partnership by investing heavily in this fulfilment facility,” said Jérôme Biencourt, head of e-commerce logistics at Bauhaus.

FM Logistic expands Bauhaus contract

Posted on by David Priestman

Third-party logistics company FM Logistic has renewed and expanded its e-commerce logistics contract with the German DIY retailer Bauhaus. The new contract has led to doubling the size of the Lovosice fulfilment centre, in the Czech Republic, from 30,000 to 60,000 sq m.

FM Logistic is managing Bauhaus’ online orders and distribution to consumers in Austria and Germany from Lovosice, a Czech town located near the German border. The cooperation started in 2018. Under the new contract, FM Logistic will handle a broader range of Bauhaus products. Bauhaus is indeed planning to bring the range of products stored in Lovosice from 30,000 to 100,000 SKU by 2030.

“In 2020, we handled 66% more orders than the year before. In 2021, we expect volume to increase by another 34%, which brings us to more than one million orders per year. To support this growth, we have been closely cooperating with Bauhaus to co-design and automate warehouse processes,” says Guilhem Vicaire, Business Solutions Director Central Europe at FM Logistic.

The contract covers further investments in automation. FM Logistic and Bauhaus have set up an on-demand packaging machine to produce the right size box for non-conveyable items. They have also invested in automated sorters and a goods-to-person picking system to improve order processing.

The additional warehousing space was delivered by P3 Logistic Parks. It was inaugurated in October 2021 by Johannes Wechsler, SVP E-Commerce & Digital at Bauhaus, and Jean-Christophe Machet, FM Logistic’s CEO.

“We decided to work with FM Logistic in 2018. Together we have succeeded in setting up an important link in our e-commerce logistics chain. We see FM Logistic as a strategic partner. That is why we have decided to extend our partnership by investing heavily in this fulfilment facility,” said Jérôme Biencourt, head of e-commerce logistics at Bauhaus.

ZeKat launches logistics platform

Posted on by Keith McKinley

Pursuing its growth and development, ZeKat Group has launched a €4m investment project over two years to develop a multi-protocol mobile logistic platform. This gateway will integrate an open software architecture allowing remote management of embedded algorithms to ensure globalised logistics monitoring.

Since its creation in 2015, ZeKat Group has continuously grown to become a reference in IoT technologies and a leading mechatronics equipment manufacturer. The Group promotes French sovereignty in terms of design and production, particularly in the Defence, Industry and Agriculture sectors. For this last sector, the group has created a dedicated brand, IoF (for Internet of Fields), and launched a collaborative research project to develop an open and innovative technological ecosystem. With an investment of €1.2m, this project is dedicated to locally embedded artificial intelligence applications for the deployment of à la carte decision support tools in agriculture, as close to the data as possible (edge computing).

During the past few months, the Covid-19 crisis has brought to light a new paradigm: global demand is becoming unpredictable with changes in consumer behaviour, the activity of manufacturers is sometimes slowed down by health measures, and warehouses can be quickly congested or underused. Supply chain players therefore need, more than ever, visibility into pending orders, the state of production or stocks. In the meantime IoT paves the way for unprecedented levels of visibility, control and business intelligence which help to improve productivity and profitability.

Pursuing its commitment to create open and specialised ecosystems in specific sectors, ZeKat Group has decided to step up its presence in the logistics sector by developing a first dedicated brand, IoL (Internet of Logistics), which will combine all its knowledges and build specific offers. By associating the expertise of four of its subsidiaries, the group will develop a universal mobile IoT platform for logistics monitoring based on an intelligent gateway – a modular and open hardware and software platform allowing the integration of specific intelligence to support logistics decisions – and a device management platform.

This one will allow to manage the deployment of new services, remotely, by creating a digital twin and to deploy distributed intelligence models. The IoT platform must be able to combine several long-range (5G, LTE-M1 / NB-IoT, satellite IoT) and short-range (BLE, WiFi) communication networks and provide a guarantee of non-alteration based on the integration of blockchain elements.

This project, supported by the French Stimulus Plan, should enable France to position itself as a Global ecosystem in the development of secure IoT solutions to support major changes in the global supply chain. To do this, it wants to work with several major players in logistics and create a consortium of manufacturers. Its objectives will be to test, develop and promote the solution as soon as the pre-series are produced. This consortium will have to share a certain number of communication and data exchange requirements and validate them through the publication of a repository to promote a sovereign French solution that can be used by multiple actors.

These developments will be based on Ercogener’s 40 years of experience, a subsidiary of the ZeKat Group active in accurate geolocation (centimetre guidance), in the management of vehicle fleets (optimisation of fuel consumption) or in global logistics monitoring but also on the expertise of another subsidiary of the group, eRTOSgener, a specialist in embedded intelligence. The solution will be industrialised in France within AZKEDIA, which has an electronic solutions production site in Saumur.

Finally, this solution will be directly applied to the group’s new activity. Its subsidiary ZK-Systems produces containers that must travel from Saumur to their place of installation in Mali, without suffering major shocks under penalty of equipment breakage or theft of equipment during their journey. The containers are sent by truck to the port of Le Havre then by boat to Tanger then Dakar and finally by truck to Bamako.

ZeKat launches logistics platform

Posted on by David Priestman

Pursuing its growth and development, ZeKat Group has launched a €4m investment project over two years to develop a multi-protocol mobile logistic platform. This gateway will integrate an open software architecture allowing remote management of embedded algorithms to ensure globalised logistics monitoring.

Since its creation in 2015, ZeKat Group has continuously grown to become a reference in IoT technologies and a leading mechatronics equipment manufacturer. The Group promotes French sovereignty in terms of design and production, particularly in the Defence, Industry and Agriculture sectors. For this last sector, the group has created a dedicated brand, IoF (for Internet of Fields), and launched a collaborative research project to develop an open and innovative technological ecosystem. With an investment of €1.2m, this project is dedicated to locally embedded artificial intelligence applications for the deployment of à la carte decision support tools in agriculture, as close to the data as possible (edge computing).

During the past few months, the Covid-19 crisis has brought to light a new paradigm: global demand is becoming unpredictable with changes in consumer behaviour, the activity of manufacturers is sometimes slowed down by health measures, and warehouses can be quickly congested or underused. Supply chain players therefore need, more than ever, visibility into pending orders, the state of production or stocks. In the meantime IoT paves the way for unprecedented levels of visibility, control and business intelligence which help to improve productivity and profitability.

Pursuing its commitment to create open and specialised ecosystems in specific sectors, ZeKat Group has decided to step up its presence in the logistics sector by developing a first dedicated brand, IoL (Internet of Logistics), which will combine all its knowledges and build specific offers. By associating the expertise of four of its subsidiaries, the group will develop a universal mobile IoT platform for logistics monitoring based on an intelligent gateway – a modular and open hardware and software platform allowing the integration of specific intelligence to support logistics decisions – and a device management platform.

This one will allow to manage the deployment of new services, remotely, by creating a digital twin and to deploy distributed intelligence models. The IoT platform must be able to combine several long-range (5G, LTE-M1 / NB-IoT, satellite IoT) and short-range (BLE, WiFi) communication networks and provide a guarantee of non-alteration based on the integration of blockchain elements.

This project, supported by the French Stimulus Plan, should enable France to position itself as a Global ecosystem in the development of secure IoT solutions to support major changes in the global supply chain. To do this, it wants to work with several major players in logistics and create a consortium of manufacturers. Its objectives will be to test, develop and promote the solution as soon as the pre-series are produced. This consortium will have to share a certain number of communication and data exchange requirements and validate them through the publication of a repository to promote a sovereign French solution that can be used by multiple actors.

These developments will be based on Ercogener’s 40 years of experience, a subsidiary of the ZeKat Group active in accurate geolocation (centimetre guidance), in the management of vehicle fleets (optimisation of fuel consumption) or in global logistics monitoring but also on the expertise of another subsidiary of the group, eRTOSgener, a specialist in embedded intelligence. The solution will be industrialised in France within AZKEDIA, which has an electronic solutions production site in Saumur.

Finally, this solution will be directly applied to the group’s new activity. Its subsidiary ZK-Systems produces containers that must travel from Saumur to their place of installation in Mali, without suffering major shocks under penalty of equipment breakage or theft of equipment during their journey. The containers are sent by truck to the port of Le Havre then by boat to Tanger then Dakar and finally by truck to Bamako.

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