Addrup-Essen / Borgholzhausen, June 22, 2023 - Good food produced in a sustainable manner is a recipe for success for Wernsing Feinkost GmbH in Addrup-Essen (Oldenburg) in Lower Saxony. Its growing range of potato products, antipasti, spreads, desserts, dressings, dips and sauces, marinades, pastes, savory products, salads, soups, and stews is on everyone's lips, reaching gourmets via specialist wholesalers, retailers, discounters, and industrial partners.
As part of the Wernsing Food Family with 11 production sites in Germany and 15 in Europe, the European family of companies with 4,600 employees generates annual sales of around 1.65 billion euros.
At Wernsing's Addrup-Essen headquarters with 1,600 employees, Westfalia Technologies GmbH & Co. KG expanded its capacity from the previous 61,000 rack positions by around 23,000 rack positions for euro, industrial, H3 and disposable pallets in 2022 with an automated cold storage warehouse and two automated deep-freeze warehouses. The intralogistics specialist impressed the customer with its Satellite® technology for dynamic, stable and compact multi-deep storage, which is particularly gentle on materials and pallets.
As a manufacturer of potato products, Wernsing's challenge was to fully utilize the seasonal potato harvest, i.e., to process the potatoes in bulk and store them at a single location until they are sold. "Maximum capacity had to be created in a very limited space," says Fabian Spitz, Sales Technologies & Systems at Westfalia, describing the goal. "Our multi-deep compact storage systems have a space utilization rate of around 95 percent, which makes optimum use of the very limited floor space."
The production of frozen potato products and ambient foods is usually done in large batches. "The Satellite® storage systems, with their enormous storage density and capacity in a small footprint, are an ideal fit for our product range structure," confirms Alfred Kessen, Managing Director of Materials Management and Purchasing at Wernsing Feinkost GmbH. "Multi-deep storage is much more cost-effective for us than single-deep storage.”
Compared with multi-deep storage concepts from other suppliers, Westfalia's response to the tough conditions for loading equipment was convincing. "Storing heavy loads over a long period of time - in this case units weighing around 1 ton with potato products - puts enormous stress on the pallets," says Fabian Spitz. "As a result, they bend in warehouses with 2-rail support, and malfunctions can occur. With the combination of a 3-rail support - an additional center rail in the storage channels - and the load handling device Chain Satellite®, we enable long service lives with high system availability thanks to particularly stable storage and durable, reliable technology. And our customer can easily store items destined for export, for example, on one-way pallets without a bottom pallet without any problems."
The satellites which are split for the special storage profiles, "move under the pallet and pick it up in a very material-friendly manner. The pallet does not change position in the process. This also allows higher dynamics during storage and retrieval," emphasizes Fabian Spitz. In dialogue with Wernsing, the Chain Satellite® with 3-rail support proved to be the optimal solution for the project-specific requirements in terms of capacity and availability.
"Westfalia impressed us with its commitment at an early stage," says Tobias Steenken, Head of Intralogistics at Wernsing. The handover from sales to the project team was seamless, "which is rare," he points out.
"The project managers were consulted at an early stage before the order was placed, requirements were defined in meetings, and the overall concept was jointly developed step by step with exact specifications until the tender was ready to be awarded.”
Westfalia was able to rely on a particularly wide range of different satellites for the transport of single or multiple load units, including unusual formats, instead of having to rely on a few standard shuttles. Spitz: "With this modular system, we can fine-tune our storage systems to meet any requirement.”
Warehouse automation contributes to sustainability
As the first company in the potato processing industry in Germany, Wernsing has been certified as carbon neutral since October 2020. The process began in 2002. The status is reviewed and optimized annually through site climate assessments with the certified consulting firm ClimatePartner.
"We are constantly trying to reduce and avoid emissions. And we offset them through ClimatePartner climate protection projects," says Alfred Kessen. With the high-bay warehouses, general contractor Westfalia provided a decisive building block for the sustainable growth of the food producer in several respects.
"We take a holistic approach to our investment decisions," says Alfred Kessen about the order placed with the medium-sized intralogistics company from Borgholzhausen, Germany. "We look at our investments economically, ecologically, socially, and in terms of energy as part of our energy management system, for which we were certified according to DIN EN ISO 50001 back in 2013."
The result was a clear decision in favor of Westfalia's resource-saving storage technologies: "The selected storage system also convinced us in combination with the energy-efficient storage and retrieval machines. These feature intelligent drive controls for energy balancing between the travel and lift axes - for example, braking energy is made available as lifting energy - and for feeding electricity back into the system. The warehouse layout also reduces energy consumption. The multi-deep warehouses require only three storage aisles and standby vehicles, and the high storage density reduces the area that needs to be cooled. Thanks to the high capacity of the site, logistics could be bundled in an economical and resource-saving way.
Bundling for growing product range
"In the course of our continuous growth, we have increasingly used external storage capacities. For logistical reasons, large quantities of goods had to be returned to our central warehouse," explains the Managing Director of Materials Management and Purchasing. "Wernsing already had 61,000 rack spaces for food storage. With its comprehensive range of chilled, frozen and dry goods, the company is a powerful partner for the retail trade,” he says.
"Short delivery times, a high level of service and a wide range of products to reduce complexity for customers are part of our business model. With the expansion of approximately 23,000 rack positions, automated with space and energy-saving Satellite® technology, we can provide storage and shipping logistics with simplified processes and very effectively directly from the production site".
Economic and social sustainability
"The fact that the automated storage system makes warehouse processes more efficient and safer was also important from a social point of view," emphasizes Kessen. "With the automated warehouses, we are addressing the shortage of skilled labor and the challenging working conditions in the deep-freeze warehouse environment. We wanted to keep the number of people required for storage and retrieval as low as possible, while at the same time reducing the workload. Even with automation, we still put people first. We want our people in intralogistics to take on more supervisory roles. This reduces the workload. Jobs in intralogistics will become more attractive.”
Maintenance lifts for the storage and retrieval machines (SRMs) are also a special feature of Westfalia's warehouses. In the extremely cold and frozen storage areas, which are also inert in terms of fire protection, the lifts take the strain off the staff. Fabian Spitz: "They enable the service staff to reach every point in the 30-meter high warehouses with minimum effort.”
Deep-freeze storage systems rotated by 20° for maximum capacity
Westfalia's project planners and engineers worked with Wernsing to find the ideal balance between compactness and access frequency. The access frequency is lower than in single-deep warehouses, but ideal for single sort channels and longer storage times. The two 56.5 meter long, 30-meterhigh, 62.2 meter long and 41.6 meter wide deep freeze warehouses offer a total of 17,360 Euro pallet spaces for load units weighing up to 1,050 kg. The 61-meter-long, 9.2-meter-wide and 30-meter-high cold storage facility has 2,988 industrial pallet spaces for load units weighing up to one ton. In total, there is space for up to 23,066 units, depending on the format.”
"In each warehouse, we use an SRM with a Chain Satellite® for transverse storage," says Carsten Lüdeking, project manager at Westfalia. "Together, the three SRMs perform up to 184 pallet movements per hour. Another special feature, he says, is the enormous flexibility of the warehouse layout. "The two deep-freeze warehouses were built at a 20° angle to the chilled warehouse to take account of the site boundary. The available space has been maximized with staggered channel depths. The deepest channel provides 24 pallet spaces.
The SRMs, manufactured in-house, were supplied including PLC. The storage system was integrated into an existing automated conveyor system of a market partner. Lüdeking: "Westfalia integrated the walls, racks and roof of the new installation in a self-supporting silo design and linked the system on the software side to the existing logistics software".
The electric overhead conveyor of the warehouse system, which transports the units from production to the warehouses or from there to shipping, is connected to each of the three storage aisles by pairs of L-shaped conveyors from the Westfalia system. After a contour check, the pallets on the conveyors each pass through an airlock with vertical gates. These airlocks shield the stores, which are oxygen-reduced for fire protection. The conveyors each transport the pallets to a turntable that rotates them to the aisle for transfer to the SRM. The retrieval lines are set up accordingly.
Westfalia began implementing the project in December 2020, and the new warehouses were commissioned in June 2022 and filled with products from the current potato harvest by the end of October. The products will be stored there until they are completely sold.
Tobias Steenken: "Pleasant solution-oriented cooperation"
"The cooperation with Westfalia was optimal, we overcame obstacles together," emphasizes Tobias Steenken. "Westfalia looked for practical and feasible solutions for the benefit of the customer. Our impression is that our intralogistics partner is committed to ensuring that the customer is not left with the costs."
"The project management and site management on site were always flexible and good contacts and solution finders for the various trades. This made our work enormously easier, as we could fully rely on Westfalia and did not have to be on site ourselves around the clock". The cooperation with the "first-class site managers", the trades and the entire project was very pleasant and calm.
His conclusion: "With the total package of roof, wall, steel, storage and conveyor technology, we were able to use all of Westfalia's know-how. The detailed concepts were very well worked out, our requirements were always taken into account, but nevertheless we were always critically questioned and the necessity checked. That's what makes a good project team.”
