Lighthouse project has started operation
At the beginning of October 2022, the logistics center of Imbach Logistik AG in Lucerne-Littau went into operation. Inside, the new building impresses with state-of-the-art technology: the fully auto-mated high-bay and small parts warehouse is based on forward-looking and space-saving solutions.
Above instead of next to it: In order to make optimum use of the available space, the fully automat-ed small parts warehouse in the new logistics center of Imbach Logistik AG is located above the high-bay warehouse. "Usually, it is placed next to it," explains Managing Director Christian Kempter-Imbach. Imbach Logistik AG, headquartered in Schachen LU, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Galliker Group. At the beginning of October 2022, it put its new logistics center in the Littau district of the city of Lucerne into operation and gradually ramped it up. The figures for the new building are impressive: When completed, the total area across all floors will be 30,000 square meters - the equivalent of four soccer fields. There are 6,500 pallet spaces in the high-bay warehouse, and the small parts warehouse can handle up to 130,000 containers. With the completion of the second construction phase, the new logistics center will provide around 60 jobs.
New way of thinking implemented
It's the inner values that count. The realization of the automated logistics center was technically challenging and time-consuming. Christian Kempter-Imbach: "We accepted this challenge because the lighthouse project represents another important development step for us and the entire Galliker Group." The building provides the basis for customized, efficient and ecological services in the field of warehouse logistics. Central to this is the management of goods for customers. This ranges from the storage of products and order picking to shipping to recipients and customer-specific additional services.
The new building was challenging because of the aforementioned arrangement of the small parts warehouse above the high-bay warehouse. This is because the floor load is enormous, amounting to 5 tons per square meter; in purely mathematical terms, the floor could thus support 55 Airbus A380s. In addition, this layout required new planning and thinking: the installed automated shuttle system, for example, moves over three floors. "Designing the necessary connections over these three floors ensured that we had to rethink many facets in the overall solution," explains Mauro Lu-nardelli, business manager at SSI Schaefer AG. "But that's where we bring our intralogistics exper-tise to bear in such a way that customer companies get exactly the customized solutions they need." The LFS ensures that all load carriers from several work areas are assigned to the correct work area in good time.
The second construction phase has started
The new logistics center is being built in two phases. The first has now been completed, the second was started in mid-April and will last until the fall of 2025. The site in Lucerne-Littau impresses with its central location with excellent transport links and its proximity to a number of manufacturing companies within a radius of 20 kilometers. This is the optimal basis for ecological production logis-tics. As at other locations, Imbach also relies consistently on "green logistics". For example, the company relies on the power of the sun and on energy from the earth: a photovoltaic system with a maximum output of 1,000 kilowatt hours is installed on the roof - annual production amounts to 950,000 kilowatt hours, which would be enough for 210 households. The new building is heated and cooled 100 percent with groundwater. Heat pumps are used for one, and a freecooling system for the other. Here, too, the lighthouse project in the Littauerbo-den sets standards.
