Swisslog boost for Coca-Cola plant

CCA had been operating at a plant in Northmead, NSW for more than 30 years, manufacturing 60 million unit cases of soft drink per year, producing 2,000 cans and 600 PET bottles per minute. As the company outgrew its on-site warehousing facilities stock had to be stored at a number of off-site locations, creating high levels of stock write-offs and site congestion.

Swisslog worked with CCA to design a new system to modernise its warehousing operation and consolidate storage onto a single site. The new facility needed to address chain of responsibility requirements for transport and ensure accurate and timely replenishment to other operations.

Additionally, CCA was keen to increase customer service levels and improve operational costs and stock accuracy, as well as provide a safer working environment and facilitate future growth.

Swisslog maximised vertical height with a crane-fed automated storage and retrieval system, allowing a 32m-tall high bay which can store the equivalent of 158 million cans.

The racking forms part of the construction of the building, which also enabled a quicker implementation schedule compared to free standing racking.

Swisslog designed a monorail linking the receiving, storage and staging operations to allow pallets to be transported from any source to any destination within the system. The system transports 740 pallets every hour, with a pallet reaching its destination every five seconds.

Additionally, a staging system has been developed to provide operational flexibility during peak and non-peak periods and to enable the loading of a trailer while it automatically stages the next load.

CCA considered automated loading vital and now around 15 trailers can be loaded every hour across six docks – one 22-pallet trailer every four minutes.

Apart from allowing the company to consolidate its NSW warehousing, CCA reckons the system has also benefited customers in a number of ways including high inventory accuracy and on-time delivery.