Unil AS, Norway: Highly automated central distribution center for groceries

Unil AS is part of Norway’s leading grocery chain NorgesGruppen and responsible for development, purchasing, import as well as warehousing and marketing of NorgesGruppen’s 11 private labels and 4,500 products.

From manual to centralized automated handling

Unil’s automation journey began in 2008 in connection with rapidly increasing demand combined with high costs for its inventory management, which was then performed by a handful of external, manual warehouses.

High-bay warehouse – 105,000 pallet locations

After a careful selection process, the choice fell on Swisslog and in 2009 a long-term collaboration was started. Swisslog has since delivered several successful warehouse automation projects for Unil, most recently in 2019, where the automated high-bay warehouse was more than doubled.

For Unil, the automation journey has created many opportunities and benefits. Most importantly, it provides the chance to continue growing, ensuring high product availability for NorgesGruppen, and, not least, guaranteeing low prices for consumers.

Now we ship around 560,000 pallets per year, but we have the capacity to ship one million pallets, so the future is bright.

Jarle Erlandsen Hagen, Head of Supply Chain, Unil AS