The Egemin warehouse system provides a turnkey solution for Kim's entire logistics flow.

Egemin Automation has installed a fully automated warehouse system at Belgian chocolate maker Kim's Chocolates.

The system includes three automated warehouses to store semi-finished products, packaging materials and finished products. Three automated guided vehicles (AGVs) transport goods between the warehouses and the production site.

The AGVs consist of three FLV3512/CL counterbalance vehicles.

Incoming packaging materials like wrappers, decorative boxes and cardboard cartons are automatically transferred from the receiving zone to the packing warehouse by the AGVs. The warehouse is equipped with a curve-driving pallet stacker crane that stores the supplied pallets in one of its two aisles.

When packaging materials are needed in production, the E'wms warehouse management software gives a transport command to the crane to retrieve the required pallet from the warehouse and take it to the front zone. An AGV then picks up the pallet from the front zone and brings it to the packaging line.

Besides handling packaging materials, the AGVs also transport semi-finished pallets of pralines between production and the warehouse, where the AGVs temporarily store the pallets up to three levels high.

The semi-finished pallets are stacked with boxes of one type of pralines. The AGVs then take the pallets to the sorting line, where the pralines are sorted into assortment boxes. After sorting, the pallets of assortment boxes are transported to the finished products warehouse.

The value of the contract is confidential.

Kim's Chocolates, located in Tienen, Belgium, manufactures pralines and bars, mainly for the export market. The chocolate producer made the investment because it wants to increase its storage capacity, optimise its logistics flow and support anticipated growth.