EDEKA, a Germany-based food retailer, announced plans to build its fifth logistics center.

The new facility will be located in Oberhausen, Germany, with a targeted completion set for early 2022.  

The 420,000-square-foot distribution center will supply almost 600 stores of the EDEKA-Regionalgesellschaft Rhein-Ruhr with more than 10,000 different items from its dry goods assortment. 

WITRON, Arlington Heights, Ill., is responsible for the design, integration and service of all IT and mechanical components, as well as installing WITRON order picking machinery technology. 

The expansion was commissioned to replace an aging facility in nearby Moers that EDEKA outgrew. The new Oberhausen facility will also alleviate strain on EDEKA’s central warehouse located in Hamm.

The Oberhausen center will feature a total of 57,000 pallet locations, 450,000 tray locations and 57 highly dynamic stacker cranes, designed to handle a daily pick capacity of 252,000 cases, which will be stacked automatically onto pallets and roll containers by 22 case order machines. Larger items will be picked by EDEKA logistics staff using a pick-by-voice system integrated with WITRON’s semi-automated car-picking system. The WITRON display pallet picking system places half, third and quarter pallets automatically onto pallets and roll containers, making parallel picking of several store orders onto one truck possible.

As in the four other EDEKA facilities, WITRON will have an on-site team responsible for service and maintenance of all processes and system components.