Stemilt Growers, USA:
Stemilt Growers is a family-owned and operated business that grows and distributes a variety of fresh fruits, including apples, pears, cherries, peaches and nectarines. Stemilt has a legacy of innovation and sustainability within the farming industry and turned to the Swisslog PowerStore pallet shuttle system to automate its new distribution center.
Automating to improve inventory management and customer service
Brianna Shales, Communication Manager at Stemilt, explains: "The investment in PowerStore in this one consolidated distribution center for Stemilt has allowed us to reduce our labor by fifty percent on a daily basis
"Consolidating three warehouses into one storage and retrieval system meant that the new system would have to support throughputs of 282 pallets an hour.
The benefits of consolidating inventory in a single automated facility were significant
Pallets of fresh fruits can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, and not every automation system can handle that weight. In addition, different varieties of fruit needed to be stored at different temperatures to maintain freshness.
The automation system needed to be able to support multiple temperature zones and ensure each product was stored in the right zone. The modular PowerStore system for Stemilt is sized to hold more than 13,000 pallets across five levels with 25 RowCarriers and 25 AisleCarriers.
