As grocery retailers look to increase their fresh produce automation level, Cimcorp’s expertise plays a vital role in helping them meet consumers’ demands.
Successful collaboration with leading grocery chains demonstrates the potential of Cimcorp’s automation to transform the food supply chain and ensure sustainable growth in the grocery retail industry.
From field to store within 24 hours – fresher than ever
Freshness is a paramount consumer requirement that poses challenges for grocery logistics. With Cimcorp’s fresh produce solution, grocery retailers have been able to dramatically reduce logistics delivery times from field to store.
The grocery industry is extremely competitive, as shoppers change consuming habits fast and change stores even faster. Today, stores offering the freshest, most seasonal produce win. Our job is to help industry players provide their shoppers with more high-quality fresh produce in less time, says Kari Miikkulainen, Director of Warehouse & Distribution Industry Sales at Cimcorp.
Cimcorp can halve fresh produce travel time from field to store
Optimizing intralogistics can, at its best, halve the time taken for produce to travel from field to store. For example, Cimcorp’s intralogistics solution has revolutionized the order-fulfillment process of the Spanish supermarket giant, Mercadona, enabling the delivery of fresh and seasonal produce to stores within 24 hours. By reducing lead times and optimizing order flows, Mercadona has extended shelf life for its perishable goods, reduced food waste and enhanced the overall customer experience.
Quality and efficiency in grocery shopping
Quality is another key criterion for consumers when shopping for groceries. In order picking, speed and precision are decisive for product quality, considering that there is typically a wide assortment of fresh produce articles. Boasting the largest range of groceries in the discount segment, German food retailer, Netto Marken-Discount also automated its fresh produce logistics with Cimcorp.
Ensuring quick delivery of fresh produce
Fresh produce has a limited shelf life and the longer it takes to get to the store, the greater the chance that it will spoil or lose its nutritional value. With Cimcorp’s automation expertise, Edeka Freienbrink – part of the largest German supermarket chain, Edeka Group – delivers fresh produce to its stores within 4-5 hours of receiving orders.
Securing employee safety and wellbeing
Automation can also alleviate ergonomic and labor issues, enabling operations to run in a faster and safer way. As labor availability continues to be a major challenge, employees in manual warehouses need to work harder and faster to fulfill orders accurately and on time. This poses significant ergonomic hazards and risk of injury.
The order fulfillment process is automated; we trust our robots with the heavy lifting. Trusting automation maximizes the center’s output capacity, increasing the quality and productivity of the staff at work. This collaborative, human-robotics knowledge ensures that everything inside the four walls of the distribution center is optimized, and no orders are ever late.
Kari Miikkulainen, Director of Warehouse & Distribution Industry Sales at Cimcorp
Enhancing safety and efficiency
At Edeka Freienbrink, the Cimcorp system takes care of the heavy lifting and physical work, allowing Edeka to rely on fewer people at the facility and making it easier to manage. Fresh produce automation leads to a more pleasant work environment, allowing employees to focus on problem solving and critical thinking.
Employee-centric fresh produce automation
Mercadona’s approach to the benefits of automation is very employee-centric. The accuracy and quality of picked pallets, as well as shortened lead times, are always reflected through the effect on people. Securing employee safety and avoiding excessive workload are top priorities for the Spanish grocer.
Towards more eco-friendly supply chains
Fresh produce automation and strategically planned intralogistics can enable businesses to become greener. As a pioneer in intralogistics solutions for grocery retail, Cimcorp is a partner that puts sustainability, social responsibility and governance plans into action. An inventory and supply system that flows smoothly encourages long-term resilience and complies with future requirements for transparency and sustainability, while also reducing carbon footprint and fresh-produce wastage.
Greening supply chains
In addition to successfully accelerating the intralogistics of customers around the world, Cimcorp has helped many grocers to utilize reusable plastic crates (RPCs). RPCs can help to minimize environmental impact beyond food waste.
RPCs can be used thousands of times, replacing cardboard boxes as the method of transport for fresh produce from the farm to the store shelf. For example, Cimcorp has helped Mercadona to match automation and RPCs for excellent results.
Sustainable intralogistics
Cimcorp’s Warehouse Control System (WCS) helps organize intralogistics and streamline the overall supply chain in a more sustainable way.
Through optimizing the loading of delivery vehicles, customers can utilize their vehicle space more efficiently, which leads to fuller trucks and therefore fewer trucks. This means driving fewer kilometers on the road, reducing both CO2 emissions and pollution from exhaust fumes.
Automation solutions that improve productivity and support growth
Cimcorp supplies and integrates automation solutions for warehouse, tire, and EV battery cell operations. Our modular systems combine CFlow software platform, robotics, and material handling technologies to improve productivity, support growth, and deliver measurable business value.
