TGW’s New Stingray Shuttles

With covers made from locally sourced wood, the new generation of Stingray shuttle saves 25 tonnes of plastic per year. This is a step towards more sustainable, efficient, and reliable shuttles that transport totes, cartons, trays or hanging goods.

Thomas Gruber-Blanka, Director of Product Management at TGW, emphasises the impact of the new shuttles: “The latest Stingray generation unites the highest performance and reliability with energy-saving operation and sustainable materials. Users benefit from an extremely short commissioning time thanks to the Plug & Play concept. Complete data transparency also allows for condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. Both help to optimally schedule maintenance and increase availability.”

Built-in energy-saving function

The new generation of Stingray saves a substantial amount of energy during the hundreds of accelerations and decelerations per day. The Stingray stores braking energy in power capacitors and then make it available to all vehicles on the same level for acceleration. This saves energy when accelerating. What’s more, all shuttle and tote lifts are equipped with a standard recuperation function channeling unused energy back into the power grid.

Up to 90% decrease in manual intervention and 10% higher system performance

The Stingray also performs automatic health checks, detects twisted totes and resolves the issue without human intervention. This way, manual interventions are reduced by up to 90% and maintenance effort by up to 75%.

Yet, the main strength of the shuttles lies in their maximum performance range, whether in order picking or order consolidation, across normal, refrigerated and deep-freeze settings. In addition, storage-driven applications with lower performance requirements can also be covered efficiently by applying roaming shuttle principle. With a throughput exceeding 1,500 load carriers per hour, the latest generation of shuttles is the most powerful in the world. Its performance is 10% higher than its predecessor. The individual Stingray vehicles are 20% faster, with a top speed of 5 m/s.

With an impressive number of over 20,000 shuttles in use worldwide, the Stingray has long been the solution for a seamless transportation of totes and cartons as well as of trays weighing up to 50kg. The Stingray HG (Hanging Garment) is a special variant designed for transporting hanging goods, such as dresses, coats or suits, on hangers. The introduction of the Stingray with wooden covers sets a new standard for performance, reliability, and sustainability within the material handling sector.

TGW Logistics Group is one of the leading international suppliers of material handling solutions. For more than 50 years, the Austrian specialist has implemented automated systems for its international customers, including brands from A as in Adidas to Z as in Zalando. As systems integrator, TGW plans, produces and implements complex logistics centres, from mechatronic products and robots to control systems and software. TGW Logistics Group has subsidiaries in Europe, China and the US and more than 4,400 employees worldwide. In the 2021/2022 business year, the company generated a total turnover of 924 million euros.