After nine months of construction REWE Group just started operations in their second new German warehouse for fruit and vegetables in Berkhof near Hannover.
Until recently all the suppliers of fruit and vegetables supplied several of the regional warehouses in Lehrte, Norderstedt, Stelle or Breuna, to get the fruit and vegetables to the 1,300 REWE and PENNY stores in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen, Lower Saxony, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. In future they will deliver their produce mainly to the warehouse in Berkhof. REWE Group takes over the logistical supply of the regional warehouses from there. The suppliers of the local produce are exempt; they still will supply the regional warehouses. In the coming years the REWE Group will build three more strategically placed warehouses and together with Leipzig and Berkhof, they will provide for all of Germany. Every year the warehouse in Berkhof, close to the highway A7, will handle around 250,000 metric tons of fruit and vegetables.
The change to the 5 central warehouses has several advantages for the REWE Group. In the first place, the freshness of the products in the supermarkets increases. Much of the fruit and vegetables in the range had to be stored in all the regional warehouses. In future that is only necessary in the central warehouse. And in the second place the planning of the supply needed will be steered by the demand. And in the third place flawed products and order surplus, is more consistently prevented. The concentration of the products in the new warehouses guarantees a more effective quality control of the supplied fruit and vegetables. This used to be decentralized at the level of regional warehouses.
“Fruit and vegetables contribute significantly to our image but they are fragile. The new logistic strategy with the new central warehouses optimizes the logistics of these product groups. And with lower stocks in the warehouses we increase the availability of the products in our REWE and PENNY supermarkets. The centralization simplifies the quality checks. We can control the entire stock and product flow centrally. Furthermore it saves our suppliers time.” So states Eugenio Guidoccio CEO of Fruit Logistics of the REWE Group the benefits at the festive opening ceremony of the warehouse.
“After Leipzig Berkhof is the second new central warehouse of the REWE Group. We annually manage up to 250,000 metric tons of fruit and vegetables here. The warehouse has two temperature zones to guarantee optimal freshness. And with 48 loading docks we have enough capacity to cover all peaks in logistic pressure," adds the management team member Matthias Geuder.