News
“Bella Bulgaria” SA continues its expansion, entering the logistic business
May 15
On May, 14th, the Minister of Transport Mr. Petar Mutafchiev made the first inaugural laying of the corner stone for a new logistic center of the holding Bella Bulgaria SA unique for Bulgaria. The Mayor of the town of Plovdiv Dr. Ivan Chomakov, the District governor Mr. Todor Petkov, the Chief architect of the Municipality of Plovdiv Mrs. Emilia Bozhkova and others attended the inauguration.
The decision for setting up an independent logistic base is an important step for the development of the holding Bella Bulgaria SA, which with its 7 factory buildings is the biggest manufacturer in the food-processing sector in Bulgaria, continues its further development in the sphere of logistics.
The new investment aims at providing 100% timely deliveries of highest quality countrywide and in Europe. The modern base is intended to serve not only the holding factories. The capacity of loads processing will satisfy about 30% of the volume of cold store foodstuffs distribution countrywide. Due to this fact the distributive center will offer logistic services to other manufactures and suppliers who will be willing to take advantage of the already established quality of storage management and supply of the foodstuffs.
The total investment of the finished logistic base will amount to EUR 25mln. The capacity of the logistic base is 100 tons of chilled and 80 tons of frozen products per hour, with possibility for serving 430 trucks a day.
The center is located on an area of 54 decares, in the north-west industrial zone in the town of Plovdiv, immediately close to Trakia highway and 25 km away from Krumovo cargo-airport.
The new logistic center is the biggest and unique one on the Balkan Peninsula having refrigerator chambers working under different temperature regimes and full automation of the different levels. The design is done in cooperation with the Austrian company KNAPP Systemintegration GmbH, a world leader in the sphere of the logistic decision for supply chain management. Mecalux, one of the world leaders for warehouse products on the market will be in charge for the whole equipment – shelving, the robots for the automated warehouse, the cranes, the conveyor for pallet moving, the rest of the warehouse machinery, as well as the software system for the warehouse management (MLX-WMS).
Two unique characteristics for the logistic center will be applied for the first time not only in Bulgaria but also on the Balkan Peninsula.
The first is: the manner of building and constructing the base. The logistic base will be AN INSTALLATION WITH SELF-SUPPORTING DOUBLE DEEP PALLET SHELVING SYSTEMS WITH STACKING ROBOTS. The distributive center will have two independent sectors. The deep-frozen products storage sector is 30m high with a capacity of 10 000 pallet-places at the temperature of -20 °С, and the chilled products sector has a capacity of 4 660 pallet-places at the temperature range of 0 to +4 °С. In each sector there will be formed sections for grouping.
The second unique characteristic is the computerized system for storage management of the products and the delivery grouping. The operators in the base are solely required to input the client’s order. The whole process further is fully automated:
• Product selection with certain expiry date according to FIFO (first in first out)
• Localization in the corresponding storage sector
• Moving by robot-cranes to the grouping sector.
Thus the freshness of the products in store will be fully traced and the possibility for human mistake in loads processing and grouping will be brought to the minimum.
The logistic center will have the biggest own truck park for refrigerated transport in Bulgaria. It will include 200 special refrigerated trucks with service load of 2 to 22 tons and temperature range of 0 ° С to – 30 °С, delivering daily to every place countrywide.
The logistic base has a key position not only due to the fact that is localized in the center of the country where the Euro corridors №4 (Budapest-Vidin-Sofia-Thessaloniki-Istanbul), №8 (Durrës-Skopje-Sofia-Burgas-Varna) and №10 (Belgrade-Sofia-Plovdiv-Istanbul) cross but also because it is located at an approximately equal distance from the biggest towns in Bulgaria.
The ambitious programme of Bella Bulgaria Holding also envisages the building of the same logistic center in Northern Bulgaria in the region of the town of Ruse in 2009 aiming at delivering to the northern neighbour-country Romania.