The WITRON Group can reflect on another successful business year for 2024. Sales increased by 100 million EUR to 1.4 billion EUR. The company also hired 500 additional staff members, which means that 7,500 people are currently employed by the family enterprise. Another positive development is that 89 young people have decided to start their apprenticeship at WITRON.
Successfully ramped up projects as well as new orders for the design, implementation, and service of highly dynamic food, near-food, and non-food distribution centers for retail customers in Europe, North America, and Australia complement the business year and also allow for a positive outlook.
“Even if investment decisions are sometimes delayed due to the current geopolitical conditions, we should look positively to the future based on our successful company history”, emphasizes WITRON founder and owner Walter Winkler. “The decisive factor will be to optimally cope with the existing conditions. Consequently, this means focusing on the things that we can actively influence: Namely, to design and implement logistics facilities for our customers that are cost-efficient and to underpin our global reputation for delivering premium quality. Then, we will be rewarded with orders even in challenging times.”
New orders from well-known food retailers
The order book shows that this credo is proving true. Although, the number of orders received is slightly below the record figure achieved in the 2023 business year, it is still very satisfying. Contracts signed with well-known food retailers in WITRON’s core markets of Europe, North America, and Australia, have strengthened the reputation of the OPM / COM system as the world’s most successful fully automated storage and picking system for retail units in the food retail sector. The trust placed in WITRON by the food retail industry was based on numerous projects in the dry goods sector (43 percent) and in the perishable / frozen goods area (57 percent) for customers in Germany, Benelux, Scandinavia, North America, and Australia, which were implemented on time and within budget. These include the almost 103,000 square meter omni-channel facility for Swedish food retailer Axfood, which reached full functionality shortly before the 2024 Christmas season and will supply more than 1,500 stores and thousands of click + collect / HomeDelivery customers daily from a wide range of 22,000+ different products. These products are stored in a temperature range of plus 18 degrees Celsius to minus 26 degrees Celsius. On a peak day, the OPM, CPS, AIO, DPS, and OPS modules pick almost 1.6 million units. In addition, a fully automated shipping buffer optimizes the entire dispatch process – all controlled by an intelligent WITRON warehouse management system.
The dry goods logistics center of food retailer Coles in Redbank (Brisbane) implemented by WITRON has even won the prestigious ASCLA Award (Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia) in the “Automation, Robotics or Emerging Technology” category. The decisive factor for the 16 judges was the high level of efficiency in the entire supply chain, cost-effectiveness, product availability, occupational safety, and sustainability of what is currently probably the most efficient distribution center of the southern hemisphere.
Based on the success of the Redbank facility, WITRON has successfully ramped up another highly automated distribution centre for Coles in Kemps Creek (Sydney). The state-of-the-art site matches the scope and functionality of the facility in Redbank and also impressively underlines the strength of a joint trusting cooperation. And the partnership will be further intensified in the future. At the end of October 2024, Coles awarded WITRON with the design and implementation of another automated logistics center near Melbourne – with the aim of further optimizing the supply chains based on innovative WITRON logistics technology.
Service continues to grow
WITRON Group’s service business was also further expanded. This is reflected in the integration of eight new OnSite service teams in our customers’ logistics centres. A total of 67 OnSite teams with 4,400 staff members in 12 countries is currently ensuring a permanently high availability of all material flow, IT, and mechanical components.
In the future, their work will be further optimized by an innovation called ‘one device’, allowing service technicians central access to all WITRON service tools via a SmartPhone. As a result, active and proactive maintenance work can be organized even more efficiently. This innovation fits perfectly into “WITRON’s interface offensive”, where workstation dialogs are individually adapted to the requirements of the respective workers in order to ensure maximum usability / UX.
In-house platform production
The company’s product range was expanded in 2024 with the in-house platform production in modular construction. In the future, these platforms will be manufactured in-house in the production facilities of WITRON Stahlfertiger GmbH + Co. KG located in Waidhaus, Germany. Based on end-to-end processes and state-of-the-art operating equipment, all work steps – from design to statics calculation – can be carried out largely without third-party suppliers. The first ‘WITRON platforms’ have already been installed for various US customers.
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