How Automation Can Fight the Clock on Shelf Life

The Guadix center has been so successful that Mercadona plans to automate fresh food distribution in four new distribution centers. The automation in these facilities will help ensure product freshness for 2 million of the 5 million households that shop at Mercadona every day.

Optimizing Dairy Distribution

Similarly, dairy distribution centers have to move products from storage to dispatch with speed and precision—especially given the industry’s strict sell-by dates. When it came time to build a new liquid milk plant, Kroger chose to develop a state-of-the-art facility centered around automation. This would help ensure the quality and freshness of its products and reduce workers’ exposure to injury and work-related strain.

The Mountain View Foods facility built in Denver, Colorado, processes fresh conventional and organic milk and packages aseptically processed milk, creams, and juices. The facility’s end-to-end automated solution can store up to 36,000 crates and picks 32,000 crates per day. The system handles stacks of single plastic dairy cases on non-traditional, knee-high, plastic belt conveyors. The cases or stacks are picked according to specified sequences on one end of the facility and then palletized for truck loading at the other end, allowing for significant storage buffering in between. A warehouse control system is used for all order processing, gantry movements, and stack transport. Moreover, like at Mercadona, the software collects data on operations, giving Kroger 100-percent traceability for its dairy products.

Kroger benefits from orders picked with 100-percent accuracy at faster speeds, which results in shorter lead times, longer shelf life, and fresher products. Kroger has seen a dramatic difference between its traditional, manual facilities and the Mountain View Foods’ automated system through increased efficiencies and rapid handling, reduced labor costs and errors, and product traceability.

Product freshness and shelf life are critical to all food manufacturers and distributors: Everyone is in the same fight against the clock. Automated technology can provide a distinct advantage through enhanced speed, accuracy, and flexibility. Ultimately, maximized shelf life means more satisfied consumers, less spoilage and waste, and greater profits.

Rickard is a sales manager at Cimcorp Automation Ltd. Reach him at [email protected].