voestalpine high-tech high bay warehousing segment profits from strong e-commerce growth

2020-12-10 |

With its high bay warehousing, produced using self-supporting, highly sophisticated steel profiles and enabling fully digital warehouse management, voestalpine has established itself as an important partner to manufacturing and trading companies around the world. Its projects are wide-ranging and include a warehouse for an online shop run by a well-known Austrian food corporation, high-tech wine racks for a French wine producer, and a warehouse for a global wholesaler of electrical components in Minnesota.

Over the past year, the growth in e-commerce around the world has stimulated demand for complex warehouse logistics. Globally, the market for high bay warehousing is currently expanding at an annual rate of 7% to 8%. We are responding to this increase and growing in this segment at a similar rate, if not faster.

Herbert Eibensteiner, Chairman of the Management Board of voestalpine AG

At up to 50 meters in height, the high bay warehouses support fully digital warehouse management. voestalpine provides a complete service, from planning and engineering to production and assembly.

Europe—and Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and France in particular—remains an important market for voestalpine. The company has completed five projects for one well-known customer in the furniture industry, the latest being the installation of two high bay warehouses in Hungary with space for a total of 210,000 pallets.

Growing demand from North America

voestalpine high-tech warehousing systems are increasingly in demand in North America, with major orders recently received for the construction of enormous freezer warehouses in Indiana and Quebec. One voestalpine prestige project was realized in Thief River Falls in Minnesota for a global wholesaler of electrical components: the high bay warehouse included a total of 966 linear meters of racks which are served by more than 1,000 shuttles during automated operations. A particularly demanding warehouse project involving 28,000 spaces for truck tires and almost 40 meters in height has been completed in Canada. The significant challenges in planning the warehouse included the heightened seismic risk and wind load. The new warehouse system incorporates almost 3,000 tons of steel and is now ready for deliveries to the entire North American market.

The voestalpine Group

In its business segments, voestalpine is a globally leading steel and technology group with a unique combination of materials and processing expertise. voestalpine, which operates globally, has around 500 Group companies and locations in more than 50 countries on all five continents. It has been listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange since 1995. With its top-quality products and system solutions, it is a leading partner to the automotive and consumer goods industries as well as the aerospace and oil & gas industries, and is also the world market leader in railway systems, tool steel, and special sections. voestalpine is fully committed to the global climate goals and is working intensively to develop technologies which will allow it to decarbonize and reduce its CO₂ emissions over the long term. In the business year 2019/20, the Group generated revenue of EUR 12.7 billion, with an operating result (EBITDA) of EUR 1.2 billion; it had about 49,000 employees worldwide.

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