A New B2B + B2C Fulfilment Centre for a Premium Consumer-Electronics 3PL
Leading UK-Based 3PL (Premium Consumer Electronics Brand)
Results at a Glance
The Challenge
A premium consumer-electronics brand was scaling a global direct-to-consumer programme alongside its established retail channel. Their UK 3PL partner needed to stand up a brand-new fulfilment centre that could serve B2B wholesale orders to retailers and B2C e-commerce orders to end customers — from the same building, on the same inventory, with very different picking profiles. Three constraints made this hard: growth forecasts projected five years of double-digit volume growth so the system had to be expandable without a building extension; the site's floor plate was fixed at 41 m × 70 m and the only way to absorb projected SKU and unit growth was to use the full 10 m clear height; and a premium electronics brand cannot tolerate mis-picks — every wrong tote shipped is a returns cost, a customer-experience hit and a brand risk.
The Solution
A modular goods-to-person automation layer was built on top of a high-bay storage cube, with 43 case-handling ACR robots picking totes up to 10 m high — using the full clear height of the building. Approximately 40,000 storage locations were created on the 41 m × 70 m footprint, providing five years of projected growth capacity without expanding the building. 16 goods-to-person picking workstations are configurable for both B2B case-pick and B2C tote-pick, so peak labour redeploys across channels in real time. Three HaiPort tote-handover pairs decouple the robots from the workstations, sustaining throughput at over 1,170 totes/hour. 15 charging stations support continuous 24/7 operation. Integrated WMS/WCS orchestrates dual-channel order flow with built-in scaling headroom for additional robots, ports and workstations as volumes grow.
Systems Used
- 43 case-handling ACR robots (10 m reach)
- 16 goods-to-person picking workstations
- 3 HaiPort tote-handover pairs
- 15 charging stations
- Integrated WMS/WCS dual-channel orchestration
Why This Matters for South African Operations
Direct-to-consumer is no longer a side channel — for premium brands it is where customer experience is won or lost. 3PLs are caught in the middle: the same warehouse has to serve case-pick wholesale and unit-pick e-commerce, often from the same SKUs, often in the same hour. This case proves that a single ACR-based goods-to-person cube can do both, at scale, with effectively zero mis-picks, in a footprint sized to the building rather than the volume. For South African 3PLs, retailers and brands competing in cross-border or domestic e-commerce, the same blueprint applies directly — dense storage, ergonomic operator stations that protect productivity through load-shedding and heat, and modular scaling so capex tracks revenue.
Partner Technology Case Study
This project was delivered using automation technology from Allied Automation's manufacturing partners. Allied Automation supplies, integrates and supports the same technology platforms across South Africa and Africa. The results and specifications shown are those of the original deployment.
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