Fonterra's new dark, robot-controlled warehouse will house 110,000 pallets

Fonterra Australia is consolidating its Australian distribution network and six warehouses under one facility in Melbourne, following the signing of a 10-year warehouse service agreement with NewCold Advanced Logistics.

Opening in Truganina in July 2017, the 12-storey facility will be capable of holding up to 110,000 pallets — equivalent to filling half the MCG or 260 Olympic swimming pools — and will initially employ around 60 NewCold experts in IT, engineering, software development and management to run the facility 24/7.

Fonterra Australia Managing Director René Dedoncker said that by bringing all third-party warehousing services under one roof, the company will be able to get its dairy foods and ingredients to its domestic and international customers even faster.

“The first of its kind in Australia, the facility is highly automated and, because of its technology, we can be more agile and responsive to our customers’ needs, deliver smaller and more frequent orders and, importantly, improve our service delivery.

“NewCold uses impressive state-of-the-art systems, robots to pick and pack orders, and the ‘dark’ cold storage significantly reduces electricity use.

“Importantly, having all our warehousing services under one roof will help meet the needs of our multihub strategy, which is about playing to our strengths in global ingredients of cheese, whey and nutritionals, complementing our consumer and foodservice businesses,” said Dedoncker.

Talking about the new facility and partnership, NewCold Founder and Executive Vice President Bram Hage said this new operation will be one of the very few facilities in the world that is both ambient and temperature-controlled under one roof in a highly automated environment.

“Our Melbourne operations will play a critical role in driving NewCold’s expansion throughout Australia and Asia–Pacific. To partner with Fonterra, the world’s largest dairy exporter, demonstrates our strength in highly automated supply chain management.”

The new facility will:

• operate 24/7
• contain chilled and frozen storage all under one roof
• be located 15 km from the Melbourne port
• reduce land space requirements by 70%
• have a low-oxygen environment that prevents fire risk