Trans-o-flex Logistics Group, the German-based subsidiary of Austrian Post, has won a tendertogether with the Austria-based ACL advanced commerce labs GmbH (www.acl.at) to operate a central online distribution centre for
major German drugstore ‘dm’ in Alzenau, Bavaria.The distribution centre started operating at the trans-o-flex site in Alzenau in January thisyear, in time for dm’s online shop that is due to go live in early summer. The first tests of orderand dispatch processes took place in February and March.
In the initial stage, 20 employees will put about 14,000 different articles into storage, packthem for order-specific dispatch and hand them over to parcel operators for delivery.
In a first step, trans-o-flex will allocate a storage area of up to 5,000 sqm available for dm.The concept makes it possible to process up to 5,000 orders per day in shelving racks in the firstphase. “With respect to its potential, the co-operation with dm is one of the largest contractsthat we ever won in our history,” Peter Astor, Managing Director of trans-o-flex Logistik-Servicesaid. “Therefore, we have already secured additional space for increasing capacities at thislocation.”
trans-o-flex won the international tender, in which several service providers participated,together with ACL. Founded in 1999 in Bärnbach near Graz, this Austrian company specialises ininterlinking shop-based sale and online business for trading companies and brand manufacturers inGermany, Austria and Switzerland. ACL commissioned trans-o-flex Logistik-Service with the logisticfulfillment.
The final bid by trans-o-flex und ACL was submitted in September 2013. “Although ACL acts as themain contractor, we worked on the bid together”, Astor added. “And the fact that we won is also dueto dm’s visit to the logistic location in Alzenau in November 2013. The dm officials could see forthemselves that we were ready to start without any construction work or investment because thewarehouse with the shelving racks was already in operation, though not at full capacity.”
With the dm contract, not only the pallet warehouse in Alzenau will be used to full capacity butalso the platform with the shelving racks. In the future, dm will supply its articles to the onlinedistribution centre in the same way as it does to its stationary dm shops. The articles will bedelivered from the various dm distribution centres. Direct deliveries to online customers will takeplace in co-operation with a parcel operator specialising in B2C shipments.
