110 meters long, 52 meters wide and 25 meters high. High-tech high-rise warehouse

Cordeel Nederland is realizing a special project in Terneuzen. Commissioned by Rijnberg HBW (a sister company of A.C. Rijnberg Transportservice BV), the company is building a fully automated high-bay warehouse (High-Bay Warehouse) with shipping space for Elopak Netherlands, producer of cardboard beverage packaging.

Elopak will soon be able to store 480 million packages in one location in its 110-meter-long, 52-meter-wide and 25-meter-high warehouse, which will be built adjacent to the existing plant. By centralizing storage and improving storage and handling, the need for a safer working environment and better food safety will be met. A positive side effect is savings in costs and transportation movements.

Design and implementation

Cordeel Netherlands is responsible for both design and execution on this project. Project Manager Bastiaan van Dijk: "We are building for two of our regular clients, who have joined forces for this project. We started in April last year with the demolition of the existing buildings and the shortening of one of the existing sheds. Preparations were then made for the future connections to the existing plant. At the end of this year, the packaging will go from Elopak's factory on pallets to the Highbay. No humans are involved in this anymore, because everything is put away in the warehouse fully automatically with conveyors and pallet cranes. Because this fully automatic transport crosses another transport route of outside traffic on the site, a bridge is being built."

Many subcontractors

Cordeel Netherlands is part of the Cordeel Group NV, an independent family business that has grown over the years into a European player with 1,600 employees. The group has the necessary knowledge and experience and previously built a similar warehouse for FrieslandCampina. Similar projects are also underway at Cordeel's Belgian branch. There is intensive cooperation with many subcontractors and ancillary contractors, such as Swisslog from Zaltbommel, which is responsible for the pallet cranes, conveyors and monorails with associated controls. SPIE, as a subcontractor, is realizing the entire electrical installation. In design and execution, Cordeel coordinates the work of Swisslog and SPIE.

Cordeel Netherlands' sister company, Baeck Cladding of Belgium, provides the entire roof and facade cladding of sandwich panels and, for the high-rise building and shipping, the insulated interior boxes
with facade cladding. The load-bearing steel structure of the high-rise contains more than a thousand tons of steel and was supplied and assembled by the German company Kocher Regalbau GmbH. 

The high-rise serves as the main storage facility from the Elopak plant, Van Dijk says. "When a truck arrives, the pallet in question is called into the system and transported via monorail. In the shipping area, which has ten loading docks, the pallets are presented and loaded into the trucks using an electric pump truck."

In addition to the high-tech warehouse, the project also includes office spaces, a shipping area and changing rooms for staff. Cordeel is also providing the entire site layout: from fencing and gates to the loading pit and paving. The project can be structurally completed after the 2022 construction period. The high-rise warehouse is expected to be operational in November. 

Sister companies

Van Dijk is satisfied with how the process has gone so far. "Only the market for materials was overheated for a while, but fortunately that has now cooled down. To avoid problems, we recorded things early and purchased quickly. Where necessary, we chose alternative products in consultation with the customer." Within the Cordeel Group, the contractor branch works together with various sister companies, as was the case on this project. Van Dijk: "For example, in addition to the cooperation with sister company Baeck Cladding, the reinforcement steel was produced by our sister company C-Concrete and installed in the foundation beams and floor sections. The precast concrete sandwich panels for the exterior are also from C-Concrete, from our own production facility in Temse, Belgium."