Better known as an investor developer of warehouses in this country, GLP is looking for companies in the UK to lease robotic technology after launching its Global Robotics Service (GRS) 18 months ago.
GRS provides collaborative ‘robotics as a service’ (RaaS) solutions. The subscription-based model of RaaS creates lower upfront capital requirements, reduced fixed costs and provides flexible lease terms which helps bridge the automation gap for many small to mid-size enterprises.
RaaS also provides customers the ability to scale up and down rapidly and easily in response to changing market conditions or seasonal demand such as Christmas and Black Friday.
According to Hongming Chen, CEO of GRS: “We are just moving into Europe and the UK having secured roughly 30 projects in Asia. In Europe we have so far provided ecommerce apparel sortation robots for a large 3PL client in Italy and are looking to expand the pipeline for 2023.”
GRS can provide a number of solutions from Level 1 such as fashion apparel and postal sortation robots then there is are Level 2 for cosmetics and drugs with level 3 for grocery supermarkets and frozen food.
A full package of services including consulting, implementation, maintenance, systems and robotics upgrading can all be provided as part of this service.
“The beauty of a service, which can be costed per sort, is that a users can identify costings per use and therefore get better control of SKU costs in warehouses. It also makes it a lot easier to compare savings in the sortation from a capital outlay perspective.
E-commerce is putting an increasing pressure on traditional sorting methods and the need today is to automate as much as possible processes to drive efficiencies and to keep up with demand. GRS offers a solution that gives customers access to the benefits of robotics through an innovative subscription model, offering the flexibility of a pay-as-you-go solution, and avoiding any CAPEX expenditure.
“The scalability of the offering also makes it easier to accommodate volatilities in the market for example peak periods.”
Chen says: “We will not be restricting services to GLP warehouses as a unit we want to serve the entire market, there is no point leaving money on the table – so GRS is available to all.”
