Beth Marshall, Movu Sales Director for the UK looks at the take-aways from the big intralogistics shows in Europe and the USA.
Springtime sees the logistics Industry gathering at the hubs for intralogisics innovation and networking: LogiMAT in Stuttgart, Germany during March, closely followed in April by the US show MODEX in Atlanta. Both of these major events attracted enthusiastic crowds seeking solutions to their intralogistics challenges, generating a noticeably positive atmosphere. With Movu having a busy stand at both events, it presented the ideal opportunity to learn more about the technologies and innovations shaping the market.
Despite the current geopolitical turbulence, there was a real buzz about the shows – reflecting the optimism in the market. It was clear that investments are being made to gain efficient warehousing for the future, particularly for smaller projects, and retrofitting was another popular topic of conversation with companies seeking to make the most of their existing space rather than find a new building. Growing businesses not yet ready to make very large investments at the outset, want to increase the number of locations in their current space, negating the cost, complication and risk of a warehouse move.
Strong demand for pallet shuttles
While just prior to the Covid pandemic there was a proliferation of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) at these exhibitions, 2026 was clearly the ‘year of the pallet shuttle’. Everywhere you looked, suppliers from all corners of the globe, were showing examples of the technology.
The strong increase in demand for pallet shuttles over the last several years is due first and foremost to the solution having no single point of failure, as is the case with stacker crane based automated storage and retrieval systems. A pallet shuttle solution can be scaled up whenever needed and is more cost efficient in terms of energy – obviously a vital contribution to increasingly important warehouse sustainability targets, in addition to helping to dampen the impact of unpredictable energy costs.
While it was interesting to see the influx of pallet shuttles to the market, it is easy to understand how perplexing this can be for customers. Our advice is: there is much more to a pallet shuttle supplier than the shuttle itself – focus on the whole solution.
The growing interest in pallet shuttle technology is not purely restricted to saving space compared to conventional pallet racking or stacker crane based systems in main storage areas of a warehouse. People are increasingly seeking to leverage the cube efficiency and operational benefits of the technology in wider applications, such as forward shipping buffers, where a rack can make use of marshalling area space to buffer goods for onward delivery. In a manufacturing facility, a buffer can hold goods pulled out of storage until they’re needed again on a manufacturing line.
Single source supply
Owned by stow Group, Movu’s unique position as a supplier of racking, shuttles and software enables the business to offer as a complete, integrated solution as a single source supplier, contributing to 200 projects sold globally since stow commenced its robotics business in 2021. These are solutions designed to ensure that no warehouse is left behind when it comes to adopting automation – from a small family-run business to a large corporate. In the UK, both ends of the scale are experiencing rapid growth: small companies starting out on automation and larger companies trying to consolidate their network into one large warehouse. Pallet shuttle technology is making a big contribution to a tangible shift to automation in the UK
In 2026 the UK is cited as one of the most important automated warehousing markets. This is quite a step change for a market that traditionally relied on manual picking and forklift truck operations. While recruitment for warehouse work is not the problem it once was, finding skilled people remains an issue. For example, a lack of people training to be a forklift truck driver is impacting costs so operations are looking to eliminate forklifts, relying on either electric pallet trucks, which do not necessarily require a skilled operator, or turning to automation.
Increase density to mitigate risk
Among the other drivers shifting warehouse operators towards automation is the need for greater storage density – allowing businesses to store more goods and mitigate supply chain risk in a turbulent world. Operations wanting to go higher to achieve density are struggling to get planning permission on high buildings. While warehouse availability generally isn’t as scarce as it used to be, there is a lack of smaller urban warehouses. This, in addition to the costs of running a network of smaller warehouses has led to the ‘close to consumer’ fulfilment trend reducing in significance.
The frozen market is doing very well boosted by a huge demand for frozen food, as well as pharma and ecommerce operations. Shuttle technology is perfect for these sectors. Third party Logistics (3pl) operators – particularly the new, up and coming brands – are seeing the modular scaleability, flexibility and reliability of automation provided by shuttle systems and reappraising their ROI models.
With its heritage as part of the stow Group, Movu stands out because it makes the racking in which shuttles operate in addition to manufacturing the atlas 4-way pallet shuttles themselves. What’s more, it has its own software and its own lift design.
As Movu is accountable for every part of the solution, customers can trust its plug and play pallet shuttle technology and know that it will be supported in the years to come. Offering scaleability for business growth, the modular nature of Movu’s 4-way shuttle system avoids the need for a large initial investment, with users being able to add more shuttles and racking as they continue to grow. And to handle peaks, Movu has a short-term rental fleet.
This technology isn’t an innovation for Movu, it is simply what the company does, as was demonstrated at LogiMAT and MODEX.
