Spanish supermarket chain Mercadona has agreed a contract with WITRON for the design and implementation of a new frozen food logistics centre in Parc Sagunt in Valencia, Spain.
The ‘highly-automated facility’ is expected to be operational in 2025, supplying almost 200 Mercadona stores in Spain and Portugal with products from its range of 650 frozen items.
WITRON, a German-based provider of logistics solutions, will provide Mercadona with order picking machinery (OPM) and pallet storage and stacking machinery (PSSM). Once installed, WITRON expects that its solutions will allow 58,000 cases a day (at peak times) to be picked and stored on pallets at an ambient temperature of -23°C.
Alberto García Pardo, Key Account Manager at WITRON, said: “Through the use of innovative and sustainable logistics technology, Mercadona employees in the logistics centres benefit from leading-edge, ergonomic workstations and processes.
General Director of Logistics at Mercadona, Rosa Aguado, expanded on this, adding: “When the first stores are supplied from Parc Sagunt, it will be just over 20 years since the first WITRON facility in the Mercadona logistics network began operations.
“Mercadona and the logistics lifetime partner WITRON have been maintaining a trustworthy and successful partnership for almost two decades. It goes far beyond a usual customer-supplier relationship.
“At the locations in Ciempozuelos, Ribarroja, Villadangos, Abrera, Vitoria, Guadix – and in the future also in Parc Sagunt – WITRON has already designed and implemented 14 highly-automated projects, from which we currently supply 1,662 stores with goods from the dry, fresh, and frozen range.
“With 191 COM machines installed, we are one of WITRON’s largest customers worldwide to work with the OPM solution. In addition to high cost-efficiency, the solution convinces with a variety of sustainable benefits – for our stores, our customers, our employees, and for the environment.”
In November 2021, WITRON announced that it had automated its sixth Mercadona frozen food warehouse in Guadix, Spain. This new warehouse in Valencia will be its seventh.
