SCA Normande, part of the E.Leclerc Group, inaugurated on 22 June 2022 its new plant in Hauts de Glos (France) developed by ULMA Handling Systems.
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The company, a French leader in retail sales to end consumers and a pioneer in intralogistics automation, chose ULMA to implement its new automated warehouse.
A delegation representing ULMA Handling Systems attended the event, as well as representatives from Daifuku Europe and Japan.
"It is a very important event for us, because this facility is the result of a lot of hard work and a great deal of involvement by all of us who make up ULMA. Being able to see in person that the facility is working successfully and that our customer SCA Normande is showing it with pride makes us feel proud too and with the feeling of a job well done" said Alvaro Martinez de Lagos, CEO of ULMA.
Multi-reference pallet picking system
The system is designed to serve orders to the entire network of E.Leclerc shops in Normandy. To this end, a system has been designed to receive the multi-reference pallets from the wholesaler or manufacturer for the order picking for the shops on multi-reference pallets.
The building containing the entire system reaches a height of more than 42 metres in the automated pallet storage area, which is made up of 10 stacker cranes. The order picking area is made up of several mezzanines, with a clear height of 22 metres, where 66% of the depalletisation process is automated. For order picking, the packages are stored on trays in a mini-load with 14 stacker cranes and more than 100,000 spaces. These packages are extracted in the sequence requested by the automatic palletiser.
This facility handles 400,000 packages per week in the food section, while the adjacent fresh area handles 500,000 packages per week 100% manually (the latter can be automated at a later stage, and both buildings have capacity for expansion).
It should be noted that the project has resulted in an increase of around fifty new jobs, bringing SCA Normande's total workforce to 550 people.