Optimizing our customer services by expanding our warehouse capacity with 3000 square meters

By Christa Deuzings, Management Support Sales – The Netherlands

Logistics has become more complex and increasingly important in recent decades. It is now as important as traditional divisions like finance, production or marketing. For Chromaflo, logistics is defined as planning, implementing and controlling an efficient and effective flow of materials. Logistics services are crucial to meet our customer’s expectations and covers the whole supply chain from production, to point of sale,and all the way to the point of consumption.

Our ultimate goal is to improve our supply chain and be a flexible partner for our customers. How can we further improve our customer’s satisfaction through supply chain performance? This was the question we were constantly asking ourselves over the past few years. Our challenge consisted of having two large production-sites located close together with each having an individual warehousing. The other factor was that external rental options were hard to find and getting more and more expensive. All the above resulted in the need to increase our capacity within our supply chain, and therefore we decided to build a new central warehouse HUB in Sittard and expand our capacity by 120 %.

Primary goals:

• Increase transport efficiency for our customers in central Europe by distribution from one location instead of two
• Increase customer experience by enhanced flexibility of combined product offerings
• Reduce administration efforts for our customers by invoicing from one entity instead of two
• More production space that is currently used as raw material storage area
• Improved safety of our working environment

The design: Functionality is a must!

Hoen Architect designed a very practical and functional warehouse. This design creates a total storage capacity of 3000 square meters, which gives us space for more than 4000 pallets for Chromaflo products and raw materials. The architect designed a roof with specific fireproof regulations and which is constructed to obtain solar panels. The walls and a special sheet pile are included to meet the requirements of the fire permit. To keep the warehouse as functional as possible the architect left out all windows, designed 2 separate entries for distribution and supply of raw materials. So, no nonsense, but just functionality!

Chromaflo project team

For this project we have put together an internal team in which all forces are combined. The team is represented by Roel Haenen- Operations Manager, Leon Vliegen-Manager Logistics and Tamara Curfs-QESH manager. They have a lot of experience in tailoring our processes to customer needs. The project team is supported by BTB construction BV. They advise and guide us through all critical phases of this project.

Our building partner

We have chosen the Belgium company Molenschot Industrial Building to be our partner. They are leading in the field of industrial housing and industrial construction, with a very practical approach with an eye for customer functionality.

The planning

‘The symbolic first shovel in the ground was an exciting moment’ quoted by Leon Vliegen. After two years of planning we could finally start building in June. The outside steel frame was finished by the end of July and the roof was completed by the end of August. From that point we started with flooring, sewerage and utilities. It will be an interesting challenge, but we will be up and running in December 2020 to store the first pallets.

Logistics: The solution between order and disorder

We will keep you updated on the development of our new central HUB in the Netherlands.