PENNY Market in Sicily: a warehouse that looks to the future
Outside, a Mediterranean environment made of intense colours, sun and warm wind that smells of the sea, inside, a state-of-the-art workspace, very bright and tidy, managed with German rigor.
The contrast is stark but absolutely pleasant, made even more interesting by the warmth and welcome shown towards us by the people who work there.
We flew to Catania to visit the new PENNY Market distribution center serving the Sicilian market, inaugurated last June 3rd but operational since February.
The Pantano d’Arci center was created by PENNY Market Italia in partnership with Gruppo Di Martino – which participates in the project both as a real estate company and as a logistics operator responsible for handling operations within the structure – and represents for the discount company to feed the Rewe Group the first Italian logistics site, founded on new international approaches.
“The site” explains PENNY Market Italia logistics director Angelo Loffredo “redefines a new standard for our distribution centers. and it is the result of an innovative concept, which we started planning three years ago, collaborating together with technical designers and with the support of colleagues from the parent company.
We asked ourselves: what do we want our home to be like? The search for the best answer to this question has led us to redefine technical and logistical process aspects, making precise choices in the direction of sustainability”.
“The only variable” confirms Loffredo, “will concern the sizing, proportionate to the actual needs of the reference basin”.
In the case of the Catania hub, the structure was designed primarily to improve the level of service offered to the current sales network on the island, a total of 28 shops which are on average distant from the sales centre. 128 km, and, above all, to support its development since the objective of PENNY Market is to double the number of commercial points on the Sicilian market.
A “green” plant with large numbers
Compared to 11,800 m2 of surface area intended for the storage of dry products, 7,200 m2 are occupied by refrigerated warehouses. In particular, the fresh department has been “oversized” precisely to make the new center capable of absorbing the expected increase in traffic associated with the opening of new sales points.
The refrigerated area includes cells and related anterooms for the management of fruit and vegetables at 6 – 8°C (1,170 m2 large), dairy products (1,650 m2) and meat (535 m2) with temperatures between 0 – 2°C, frozen foods ( 1,060 m2) at – 25°C. Finally, there is a cell with a constant controlled temperature of +18°C (460 m2), familiarly called “chocolate cell” by the workers, for the shelter of items that fear the heat such as chocolate, flour, rice, pet food, and more: “a company choice” comments Salvo Ivan Pisasale, manager of the Catania hub “decided to guarantee the maximum quality of sensitive goods sent to the points of sale”.
All warehouse areas and cells have been equipped with double-depth anti-seismic shelving.
In terms of references managed, the hub hosts 1,800 fixed items, 300 managed in cross docking mode and 600 in & out.
Process organisation
All materials intended for the sales network, from technical and consumable items to post, as well as obviously the products for sale, pass through the Catania hub from which daily deliveries depart to each store.
On average, around 50 trucks arrive at Pantano d’Arci every day, for a total of 1,600 pallets to be managed at the entrance, and 20 leave for supply to the shops with optimized routes and according to a multiple assortment logic, which derives from the combination between the the order of the store, with cut-offs that depend on the product category, and the assigned calculated by evaluating consumption forecasts for the period, based on history and commercial inputs.
“We are very strict on requests in terms of productivity and compliance with the defined KPIs” underlines Loffredo. “Our logistics have the precise aim of offering the best possible level of service to the sales network: the warehouse was created precisely to achieve this objective.”
Handling within the plant is managed by a total of 35 resources reporting to F.lli Di Martino, while 10 PENNY resources take care of management, supervision, quality and process control activities.
“This is new for us, which usually act as a 3PL assuming complete responsibility for the logistics processes and their optimization” explains Franco Spampinato, coordinator of the Di Martino Group’s logistics projects.
“However, this experience is fundamental because it allowed us to deal with procedures and rigid quality standards and to acquire precious know-how.
We have demonstrated that we are able to collaborate successfully with an international player of the caliber of PENNY Market and we are ready to welcome new challenges in this direction.”
All activities are regulated by the WMS which transmits set-up and preparation orders to the operators via voice picking.
PENNY Market has constantly supported us in the training of all operators active in the warehouse” explains Gianluca Longiarù, platform manager for the Di Martino Group.
“We delivered a modern and efficient “machine” to a company that needed it.
We are very satisfied to have created a property that has become a reference standard for an international and quality-conscious reality like PENNY Market and above all to have done it within the established timescales, which in Sicily is not an easy thing.”
Text and music by Mario Di Martino, at the helm of the Catanese Group which, in recent years, has successfully completed a differentiation process – from transport, to logistics, to real estate development and management – which makes it, today, a complete interlocutor capable of offering different services, individual and integrated with each other, to companies that intend to outsource all or part of their logistics activities.
The logistics hub developed for PENNY Market is in fact the flagship of an area which, in the projects of the Di Martino Group, will give rise to the first logistics park in Sicily.
“The area of which the PENNY Market warehouse represents the second development (the first, in front of the PENNY Market hub is occupied by another large-scale retail trade operator,) is a total of 320,000 m2 large and is located in the center of the historic industrial area of Catania in an axis very important road for the island.
Our objective is to continue with its development following the logic of the logistics hub: a manned park, with unique access control and capable of generating economies of scale that lower management costs to the advantage of the tenants who will be able to have modular and parcelable spaces and take advantage of buffer zones to manage any peaks.
We were not born as real estate developers, but the need within the island for efficient “triple A” structures available for rent is real and in fact we are registering good interest from the market.”
Source: Il Giornale della Logistica
