ASOS places major order with Dematic

Dematic have been awarded a major order by global online fashion and beauty retailer ASOS.

Due to the rapid growth of ASOS, both domestically and internationally, Dematic were asked to provide a new miniload-based carton storage solution along with a batch pick and automated sortation solution for processing customer orders at ASOS's newly expanded Distribution Centre in Barnsley.

In order to be able to store BDC1 cartons, used throughout the apparel industry, a large, high bay storage facility consisting of 28 x ML20 Rapidstore cranes will be installed. The RapidStore ML Mini-Load ASRS product range is Dematic's latest generation of highly flexible, energy-efficient storage and retrieval systems. RapidStore ML systems are optimised for distribution centres, production and buffer ware­houses and offer a new, ground breaking type of flexible load handling device that supports a wide range of container and carton sizes.

As well as offering an extensive range of in-house equipment, Dematic as integration specialists with an enviable reputation for incorporating 3rd party equipment into their logistics solutions, were keen to provide the right automated sortation solution.  This led to ASOS appointing Dematic as the main contractor for the project, partnering with a leading supplier of hanging garment technology to provide a sortation solution capable of sorting flat-pack, hanging garments and non-apparel products into individual customer orders.  To manage the storage and order fulfilment process Dematic will also be installing a full warehouse control system (WCS) from their software partner DAI  who have previously delivered over 100 global projects for customers who include many of the world's largest apparel, grocery, manufacturing, distribution and 3PL companies.

ASOS said " this is major investment in our logistics infrastructure and will play a pivotal role in ensuring that ASOS can continue to provide a world class fulfilment service to our customers whilst building future capacity to support our continued rapid growth".

Dave Bull, Dematic UK Sales Project Manager said, "Dematic are delighted to have won such a prestigious project.  As well as our extensive previous e-commerce experience we were able to demonstrate our proven capabilities to implement projects of this size within a working environment which gave ASOS piece of mind that the project would be completed whilst normal operation remained unaffected".