Massive capital investment in New Zealand supply chain infrastructure will mean 115,000 automated pallet capacity will be available in Auckland by June 2025, with an additional similar 45,000 automated pallet Christchurch site under design.
Cardinal, the country’s largest privately-owned third-party logistics (3PL) company, has announced it is developing New Zealand’s first-ever fully automated 3PL warehouse in Drury, believed to be the largest of its type in the Southern Hemisphere. The innovative new facility is set to improve order processing times by up to 400%. The total infrastructure, property and automation investment will be around $450 million over a five-year period and is part of a wider multi-billion industrial development in Drury.
While speed is important, the core focus of Cardinal’s Drury development is to improve productivity and customer service delivery, lower costs, reduce waste and increase customer confidence in delivery. Its innovative automation technology will enable the smoothing of peaks in demand, meaning an optimised and lower-cost New Zealand supply-chain for Cardinal partners and for end-consumers, at a time when national supply chain infrastructure struggles with peak volumes.
Cardinal Chief Executive, Brendon Furness, said, “Covid-19 and recent extreme weather events like Cyclone Gabrielle have highlighted the critical importance of New Zealand having more resilient infrastructure. This investment is the first of its kind for New Zealand’s highly competitive logistics industry and will provide more resilience and efficiency at the customer end of supply-chains.
“We think technology and innovation can transform the future of New Zealand supply-chains. Large scale infrastructure investments in automation like this will help flatten out the surges of volume that can occur when another part of the supply chain is constrained. Combine that with more collaborative use of data analytics and AI in areas like demand planning and forecasting, and we expect to see much better and faster logistics decision-making, which will ultimately benefit consumers.
“Automation and robotics in warehouses are now proven technologies in other markets, however this is the first investment of this scale in automated logistics technology here in New Zealand, and we think the new facility will revolutionise carton warehousing. It will also drive sustainability and waste minimisation, with the use of innovative technology that will have the use of plastic shrink-wrap, and with smarter transport and warehouse utilisation that reduces emissions. The warehouse will also feature solar roof panels, capable of generating 1.4 MGW, enough to power around 220 homes.
“This is a long-term strategic investment supported by rising market demand, increasing supply chain costs, and the emergence of leading new automation technologies. These technologies will also reshape how we invest in our people to operate and maintain what we believe will be the fastest and most accurate pallet management and carton picking system in the country.”
Construction is underway and will feature a central distribution hub filled with high-speed pallet cranes and rapid sorting vehicles, with 115,000 automatic storage and retrieval system (ASRS) pallets. An integrated buffering system with capacity to handle 62,000 cartons provides for automated carton picking on a massive scale. Automated technology will move products to pallets and into trucks at high speed. This will all be housed in a six-hectare building with a 25-metre ceiling height – one of the tallest warehouses in New Zealand - to allow room for the robotics.
Delivery of the Drury project is broken down into three stages. The first stage will be completed in December 2023 and will deliver 12,000 ASRS pallets. Stage two is due for completion in December 2024 (a further 48,000 ASRS pallets) and stage three in June 2025 (the last 55,000 ASRS pallets) respectively. Another 45,000 project in Christchurch is already in the pipeline.
When operational, an order will be placed into the automated system, robotic cranes will retrieve specific cartons from their location and will, based on their weight, deliver them in the right order to the correct pallet, to be packed and then dispatched. How delivery trucks are packed will be determined by the AI system and will be based on the best route to reach each customer.
Cardinal has partnered with world leading automated material handling solutions provider, Daifuku. Daifuku aims to deliver automation that inspires and will provide all the high-tech machinery and infrastructure to run the warehouse along with a shuttle system capable of moving individual cartons through the warehouse at nearly 200 metres a minute.
This move towards automation is not the first for Cardinal. In 2022, they pioneered the Perfect Pallet program. Using smart technology to weigh products onto pallets and track their accuracy through the delivery process, Cardinal can load multiple customer products on the same pallet.
“Our automated warehouses will extend the Perfect Pallet program across a greater number of customers,” Mr Furness says, “This means faster delivery, smarter demand planning, greater accuracy, and minimal product damage for our customers, which in turn leads to consumers being more readily able to find the products they want to buy on store shelves.
“The benefits also extend to the development of new skills for logistics workers. We have some of the best warehouse people in the country, and these technologies will enable new skill development opportunities and career paths at the new facility in Drury. Given this site integrates into our Auckland warehouse network, it will also help smooth the spikes and surge volumes that occur in our industry which typically result in stress and heightened health and safety exposure.
“It is an incredibly exciting future for our partners, who will benefit from a faster and more efficient supply chain and be able to deliver better outcomes for their end customers. Drury is the next step in our mission to be the third-party logistics partner of choice for New Zealand businesses.”
