Category Archives: Warehousing

Spread over more than 2 lakh square feet area, Amazon has launched third Fulfilment Centre (FC) in Ahmedabad. The expansion in Gujarat is a part of the company’s plans announced in July to add 10 new fulfilment centres and expand seven existing sites, across India. With this infrastructure expansion, Amazon now offers a storage capacity of more than 1.5 million cubic feet across three fulfilment centres to its more than 80,000 sellers in Gujarat. Amazon recently launched a new sort centre and expanded the capacity of an existing sort centre to ensure faster and reliable deliveries for customer orders in Gujarat. Prakash Kumar Dutta, Director of Fulfilment Centres & Supply Chain, Amazon India, said, “Gujarat is an important market for Amazon India and we are delighted to further invest and expand our infrastructure in the State. With this expansion, SMBs in Gujarat will benefit both in terms of economic growth and reach to a wider customer base. With the new launches, we will be able to continue to seamlessly cater to the growing demand from customers so they can stay home and stay safe while creating thousands of job opportunities in the state.”

Talking about the future of warehousing industry, John Thomas, Group Director, Realistic Realtors & Reach Promoters and Director at CIRIL (Commercial Real Estate Advisors), says, “Warehousing has always been a centre of many sectors, whether it is FMCG, retail, fashion or 3PL companies. Warehouse will not go anywhere, it’s here to stay and become stronger. This entire COVID-19 disruption has made us think on various innovations, initiatives which we should do for our better future such as Grade-A warehouses with better facility and automation for more supplies. Today, we are facing a difficulty of getting a good and ready Grade-A warehouse in a decent location. In Delhi, we don’t have a legally compliant warehouse, the government needs to get in line and give that support and make it smoother for a warehouse to get legally compliant.”

To address a variety of storage facilities for both new and existing typologies such as logistics parks, warehouses, cold storages and other storage spaces, CII-Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) has digitally launched the IGBC Green Logistics Parks & Warehouses Rating System. Being the 27th rating of the Indian Green Building Council, the rating system addresses the national priorities and is developed in congruent with national & several state policies. It is developed aligning the requirements with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. By adopting the rating tool, the projects would achieve various tangible and intangible benefits including energy & water savings and health & well-being of occupants. The rating system was launched by Leena Nandan, Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, V Suresh, Chairman – IGBC & Former CMD, HUDCO and A M Visvanathan, Chair – IGBC Green Logistics Parks & Warehouses, Executive Vice President and Business Head – Godrej Storage Solutions, Godrej & Boyce. Suresh said, “The rating system is a ‘first-of-its-kind and exclusively developed to address Logistics Parks, Warehouses, Cold Storages and other storage facilities in India. The rating addresses unique green concepts such as design of docking bays and dock levellers, electric vehicles for indoor material handling, GHG inventory & mitigation measures, transport modal mix, vehicular routing, parking for service vehicles, green packaging and basic amenities for staff & drivers”. He adds, “Considering the present demand in the logistics sector, the sector is expected to contribute one billion sq ft of registered green footprint by 2022. The aspiration for the Council is to have 10 billion sq ft of registered green footprint by 2022.” According to Visvanathan said, “The objective of the rating system is to …

Explaining why technology cannot be disruptive for the industry, Amit Malakar, Chief Customer Officer, Welspun One, shares, “With disruptive technology coming in the picture, we have come a long way from godowns to warehouse with cubic capacity. The next level of disruption probably came in where the goods started coming to us and we did not need to go to pick the goods with the help of Automated Storage & Retrieval System (ASRS). The next level is now we could manage everything sitting at home with few people at the site but technology is helping us to manage lot of things remotely. With technology we are able to do things much more efficiently.”

Commenting on should we be investing more on technology to sustain in business, Amit Malakar, Chief Customer Officer, Welspun One, says, “Technology is going to be a very important part of our lives. Everyone needs to be digitally savvy and make sure that their supply chain is resilient enough to reach the market through their warehouses. We have seen FMCG companies who were never on the e-commerce platform are now looking at digital distribution strategy in a big way.”

Amazon India expanded its fulfilment infrastructure in Telangana with the opening of two new fulfilment centres in Hyderabad. With this infrastructure, Amazon.in now offers storage capacity of more than 4.5 million cubic feet spread across four fulfilment centres to its more than 23,000 sellers in Telangana. It has also expanded an existing sort centre to offer an overall sorting area of more than one lakh square feet, in Telangana. This expansion will help sellers offer a wider selection and enable faster deliveries of customer orders within the region and neighbouring states ahead of the upcoming festive season. The expansion in Telangana is a part of the company’s recently-announced plans to add 10 new fulfilment centres and expand seven existing sites, across India. “Amazon and Telangana have partnered on several initiatives since the commencement of our operations in India with our largest fulfilment centre in the country located in Hyderabad. We are delighted to extend the partnership further with this additional investment in the State helping us deliver safely to our customers at their doorstep,” said, Prakash Kumar Dutta, Director of Fulfilment Centres & Supply Chain, Amazon India.

Developed by operator Fraport, Swissport Cargo Services Deutschland is set to open a new cargo handling warehouse at Frankfurt Airport. Swissport is aiming to start operations at the facility in November. Located in CargoCity South at Frankfurt Airport (FRA), the new building has 17,000 sq m of floor space, including temperature-controlled zones for handling sensitive pharmaceutical products. There are also 2,400 sq m of office and communal space. Willy Ruf, Senior Vice President – Central & Eastern Europe, Swissport International, said, “From November, we will be in a position to handle the cargo of our customers in Frankfurt in one of Europe’s most state-of-the-art air cargo centers. Our new cargo warehouse has 50 per cent more handling capacity and is therefore a commitment to growth at Frankfurt Airport. With the integrated Swissport Pharma Center, which has several cooling zones, we are well-equipped to satisfy the stringent requirements for the temperature-controlled transportation of medicines and vaccines.” “The property meets the stringent requirements of a cutting-edge air cargo handling facility,” said Felix Kreutel, Head – Real Estate and Energy, Fraport, in adding, “The warehouse connects the airside and landside areas of the airport through separate freight yards. Moreover, its ground-breaking material-handling system represents an important step in the continued automation of our freight processes.

Sharing the challenges, John Thomas, Group Director, Realistic Realtors & Reach Promoters and Director at CIRIL (Commercial Real Estate Advisors), says, “The limitations of warehousing industry was and still is infrastructure; mostly an A-grade warehouse. Though it has improvised a lot; the share of A-grade warehouse would rather be approximately 40 per cent as of now and has increased by 20-25 per cent. The other limitation is the process of constructing and making an A-grade warehouse, from land cause to overall construction it includes various laws and implied approvals which take their own time and cost. We are growing and getting towards a more organised way of doing things and I am sure the government agency will definitely support this entire cause and make it more-friendly for developers.”

COVID-19 has changed e-commerce for the better and warehousing plays a very important role. Sharing his expectations from warehouse developers, Naveen Rawat, Director & Co-founder, Holisol Logistics, says, “On the e-commerce side, we are getting the requirement of being able to be as close to the customer as possible. Land cost is important, therefore, these large hubs have to be located on the outskirts of the city because firstly land would not be available in the city and secondly it would be costly to do that. While the e-commerce company wants to do a 90-minutes delivery promise to the customer, location has to be taken care of with small space within the city that has to be optimally managed. There is going to be a lot of demand of smaller fulfilment centres with some sort of automation to still be productive and efficient and being closer to the city. This is one area where we feel a lot of warehousing space is going to be required from within the city in addition to large big boxes Grade-A quality spaces which would be required on the outskirts of the city.”

With a plan to strengthen its local footprint in India over the next few years, Schenker India opened its largest warehousing hub in the country. The first phase of the warehouse spans over a space of 25,000 sq mts located in Badli, Gurgaon which is close to the KMP (Kundli Manesar Palwal) expressway and strategically located for effective and efficient supply chain management within NCR and North India. Vishal Sharma, CEO of Cluster India & Indian Sub-Continent, DB Schenker said, “It is a milestone development in the overall Contract Logistics strategy for the organisation after years of careful planning and preparation. It is also a strong testament to DB Schenker’s long term commitment to India as it is one of its most strategically important market in the global network and is projected to grow over 100% by 2025.” Equipped with digital technologies, this state-of-the-art warehouse is fully radio frequency-enabled, equipped with 100% consignment scanning feature, conveyor for operation movement, automated shutters, TAPA compliant & FM Global compliant fire prevention & suppression system, Green Building certified by GBCI under EDGE platform, and access control enabled doors among a slew of many other features