January 29, 2021

The Martin Bauer Group is moving on up: A new automated pallet warehouse improves supply security

Ever since it was established in 1930, the Martin Bauer Group has impressed customers around the world with its expertise in edible plants. To ensure supply processes can continue to run smoothly, it has now built an automated pallet warehouse at its Vestenbergsgreuth site. This greatly reduces logistics costs and provides the various work areas with what they need, when they need it.

Vestenbergsgreuth – The construction of the automated pallet warehouse is unquestionably a large-scale project. At 31 meters in height, the new white building certainly stands out. More than 200 plant raw materials from 80 different countries can be stored here on 10,000 pallet bays. Five retrieval machines and double-depth storage ensure that large quantities of different goods can be stored and retrieved with great technical precision, and reduced oxygen levels mean that the fire risk is kept to an absolute minimum.

Earthworks began in late 2018, and construction of the new building began in earnest in spring 2019. Ulf Paustian, Managing Director of Botanicals Production, explains: “On the one hand, the automated warehouse allows us to store ingredients centrally and close to the order processing area, which makes the logistics cheaper and more straightforward. On the other hand, this automated storage and retrieval of goods means that adjacent production lines can be served efficiently, as and when needed. That takes the pressure off the work areas.” The purpose of the new warehouse is to securely store prepared ingredients such as cut herbs and fruits for tea so that they are readily available for the production lines whenever they are required. In early August the warehouse was linked up to the new SAP enterprise resource planning system, which is a central element in the overall concept. The new technology makes the order processing area flexible, efficient and well equipped for the challenges of the future. Another benefit of the new automated warehouse is that capacity in the surrounding existing warehouses can now be freed up for raw materials.