IN Brief:
- Snellman is developing a separate automated distribution system while its existing logistics installation remains operational.
- The project includes robotic picking and shuttle storage capacity for 60,000 bins.
- Implementation is scheduled to begin in 2027, with the new system planned to become operational during 2028.
Finnish meat producer Snellman is preparing a new automated distribution system to support higher production volumes, replacing ageing logistics infrastructure with robotic picking, shuttle storage, automated replenishment, and new palletising equipment.
Snellman has selected Inther Group to design and integrate the installation, extending a relationship between the two companies that has run for close to two decades. The new system will be built separately from the existing installation so current operations can continue while construction and commissioning take place.
The investment addresses two constraints simultaneously. Snellman wants additional production and logistics capacity, while the present automated distribution system is approaching the end of its technical operating life. Building a separate replacement allows the company to expand rather than simply substitute one ageing installation for another.
Robotic order picking will handle part of the flow for higher-volume products, with Inther working alongside robot supplier Bila. Products not assigned to the robotic cells will be handled through ergonomic goods-to-person picking stations, retaining manual work where volume, order mix, or product characteristics make it more appropriate.
Storage will centre on a shuttle system designed for 60,000 bins. The wider installation includes lifts, conveyors, automatic replenishment, picking workstations, and a new palletising system, with software, PLC control, hardware engineering, and specialist equipment brought together within the same project.
The scale of the buffer reflects the difference between production and customer ordering. A chilled-meat factory will often manufacture and pack according to raw-material availability, line efficiency, product shelf life, and campaign planning, while retailers order according to a separate pattern of store demand and delivery schedules.
Automated storage sits between those two rhythms, but chilled food cannot remain there indefinitely. Product continues moving through its shelf life while in distribution, making stock rotation, traceability, and rapid access more important than simply maximising the number of containers stored in the building.
The new installation is intended to process substantially more volume during fewer operating hours than Snellman’s existing system. That changes the requirement from storage density alone to movement capacity: bins have to enter the system, reach picking, be replenished, consolidated, palletised, and dispatched quickly enough to match the expanded factory.
Selective robot picking reflects that distinction. High-volume products provide repeated movements and relatively predictable demand patterns that suit robotic handling, while lower-volume or more variable products can remain better suited to operators working at goods-to-person stations.
The arrangement also leaves room for further automation. Additional robots, shuttle aisles, and workstations can be introduced later, giving Snellman the option of increasing capacity after the initial system has moved into commercial operation.
That modular approach avoids two common problems in food-factory logistics. Building an installation only around current volumes can create the next production bottleneck relatively quickly, while installing all theoretically possible capacity at the outset ties capital up in equipment before demand exists to use it.
Controls integration will be central to whether the physical equipment delivers the intended benefit. A shuttle, conveyor, robot, and palletiser can each operate effectively in isolation, but the distribution centre has to sequence them around inventory status, orders, replenishment, product availability, and dispatch deadlines.
Chilled products make sequencing more important because stock age becomes another decision variable. Inventory cannot be treated as interchangeable merely because the item code is identical; the system also has to support the rotation rules used to protect remaining shelf life.
Traceability creates a parallel requirement. Production batches moving into storage have to remain connected to their identity as individual bins are stored, retrieved, picked, consolidated, and assembled into outbound pallets. Greater automation increases the speed of that movement, which makes reliable system data more rather than less important.
The project demonstrates how closely food-factory automation is now tied to intralogistics. A processing line can increase output only until its warehouse, picking system, cold store, or despatch operation becomes the next constraint. Investment in production capacity therefore has to be matched by the infrastructure that clears finished product from the factory.
Snellman’s new system is being designed while the current installation remains in service. Keeping the two separate reduces the risk of a logistics upgrade interrupting the chilled-food operation it is intended to support, although the eventual transition will still require careful planning as inventory and order processing migrate to the new system.
Implementation is scheduled to begin in 2027, with commercial operation planned for 2028. Until then, detailed software development, equipment integration, installation, and testing will have to take place around an existing operation that continues supplying customers.
The 60,000-bin capacity and robot count provide obvious measures of the project’s scale, but Snellman’s more useful test will come after commissioning. The investment has to move a greater volume of chilled products through fewer operating hours while maintaining stock rotation, traceability, order accuracy, and delivery performance.
If those elements remain aligned as production expands, the distribution centre will stop being a constraint on factory growth. If they do not, adding more processing capacity will merely produce finished goods faster than the operation can move them out of the building.
