Coca-Cola Finds Efficiency And Energy Savings Through Automation

By Karla Paris

Automated Storage and Retrieval System amps up capacity for the 122-year-old beverage giant

Coca-Cola Enterprises, the bottler of Coca-Cola, opened a new Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) warehouse in its Wakefield, UK factory.  The factory is Europe’s largest soft drinks plant by total volume.

The company invested in the warehouse as part of its strategy to enhance sales performance, while maintaining its commitment to sustainability and the environment.  The facility is designed to hold and automatically move nearly 30,000 pallets throughout the warehouse.  This investment doubles the site’s storage capacity, allowing all manufactured products to be delivered to customers directly. This saves approximately 500,000 road miles by heavy goods trucks per year. Additionally, development in 2014 will see the introduction of a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system at the factory which will save 1,500 tons of CO2 a year, a 5.6 percent reduction for the site.

Further investment will include the development of a new production line dedicated to making the iconic contour Coca‑Cola bottle in larger PET (polyethylene terephthalate) packaging, including 1.25L and 1.75L formats for the European market.

Another manufacturer, California Natural Products (CNP) — a maker of more than 400 foods and beverages — announced just a few weeks ago that it too has unveiled its 18,000 square foot state-of-the-art automated warehouse. CNP invested in the plant to increase efficiency while reducing environmental impact by cutting energy use by approximately 80 percent and improving upon the facility’s spatial footprint by about 90 percent. With the warehouse facility enhancements, CNP is poised to sustain impressive double-digit growth and remain a pioneer in food and beverage packaging.

Located directly across the road from the company’s existing food manufacturing and packaging plant, the state-of-the-art warehouse features an enclosed overhead bridge that loops the products loaded onto pallets from the manufacturing facility to the storage warehouse using a high-speed, flexible pallet delivery system controlled by warehouse control system software.

While the ASRS addresses the inadequacies of traditional warehouse systems, these solutions are intended to equip facilities to seamlessly handle  finished product from creation to shipment and track them with detailed precision everywhere in between.