Swisslog to streamline distribution operations at Foster's Wine Estates

Swisslog has been commissioned by Fosters Wine Estates, the worlds leading premium wine company, to automate the logistics of a new packaging and distribution centre at the Wolf Blass winery in the Barossa Valley in South Australia. Swisslog was selected as a partner by Foster's Wine Estates due to its expertise in warehouse design and logistics solutions. The order, which has two stages, confirms Swisslogs strong position in the consumer goods industry and more specific in the food & beverage market segment.

The new packaging and distribution centre at the Wolf Blass winery in the Barossa Valley South Australia will service domestic and international markets. Earlier this year, Swisslog was commissioned by Foster's Wine Estates to assist with the first stage of the warehouse and distribution facility.

The main goals of the project are to make full use of leading technologies to leverage all opportunities where automation could reduce the overall costs of operation. Improving the workplace safety was also paramount by reducing the interaction of people and material handling equipment and improving efficiency by fully utilising available equipment. This will result in the automation of the whole process from goods receiving from production, storage & retrieval and their dispatch.

The facility will consist of a warehouse with more than 22,000 pallet locations, nine automatic stacker cranes and conveyor systems to connect the bottling facility to the warehouse and to serve the pallet flow lanes in the despatch area. The entire system will be controlled by Swisslog Control Systems, Swisslogs standard material flow control software AutomationManager and standardised user interface SPOC. The first stage of the warehouse will be operational by the end of 2005 and the second stage will follow in mid 2006.