Up to 1,000 Order Lines Processed Per Hour at KATOEN NATIE’s Warehouse

One year after its implementation, the automated warehouse of Katoen Natie, a logistics provider located in Saint-Martin-de-Crau, France, has reached its full potential. The automation solution designed by Element Logic now processes up to 1,000 order lines per hour.

Katoen Natie develops and delivers smarter logistics and engineering solutions, tailored to each customer’s needs. From warehousing to designing, building, and operating on-site and multi-customer platforms, they provide end-to-end services powered by in-house expertise in logistics, engineering, and IT.

Katoen Natie’s warehouse covers a total area of 350,000 m2, with 30,000 m2 dedicated to textiles. The reason for automating was to address to main objectives:

Provide a scalable solution capable of supporting the growth of Katoen Natie’s clients while closely aligning with their own needs. Seasonality plays a significant role, as peak seasons, sales and new client integrations impact their logistics process.

Offer a compact and scalable solution to optimize floor space in the warehouse

Flexibility and expertise

With these objectives in mind, Katoen Natie selected Element Logic as their partner, with the solution AutoStore, offering the highest storage density on the market.

Element Logic’s expertise as a dedicated AutoStore integrator, the flexibility of its teams, their understanding of Katoen Natie’s needs, were all decisive factors in this project.

“This transformative project marks a key milestone in our innovation strategy. The combination of AutoStore and Element Logic’s expertise allowed us to design a solution tailored to our needs. It now provides us with a high-performance system that is easily scalable.”
Nicolas Martin, Logistics Project & Innovation Director at KATOEN NATIE

The carousel ports are equipped with a “put-to-light” system that guides operators to place products into the correct bins. This minimizes errors and allows for the simultaneous preparation of four orders. The system can now process up to 1,000 order lines per hour.

To simplify system integration, AutoStore has been fully incorporated into the Warehouse Management System (WMS) developed by Katoen Natie.

Since October 2023, the automated warehouse has been operating at full capacity. Katoen Natie demonstrated its potential during the winter sales, achieving a record of 19,000 order lines prepared in a single day.

“We are proud to have supported Katoen Natie with this flagship project. The modularity of AutoStore perfectly addresses the challenges of optimization and scalability. Our great partnership and collaboration enabled the solution to reach its full potential”
Isabelle Dubois, Managing Director of Element Logic France