Hermes Germany will build a new €42 million logistics hub in Bad Rappenau, near Heilbronn in south-west Germany, with the capacity to handle 200,000 parcels per day, as part of its €300 million investment programme to modernise and expand the capacity of its logistics infrastructure.
The investment, confirmed by the company to CEP-Research, is the first project within the €300 million programme to be implemented by 2018, with the aim to profit from the ongoing e-commerce boom and move closer to smaller online retailers.
The 10,000 sqm ‘ultra-modern’ logistics centre will be built on a 64,500 sqm plot of land at the Buchäcker industrial estate. It will have state-of-the art sorting and conveyor technology, and is expected to employ some 200 workers.
The project is due to be completed by May 2016, with the facility to go into operation in March 2017. The facility will be built by ECE GmbH, also part of Otto Group, which will then lease the building to Hermes.
Amadeus Kurz, Area Manager, Hermes Logistics Group Germany, said at a local council meeting last week that the Bad Rappenau facility represents a ‘pilot logistics centre’, paving the way for nine further similar facilities to be built across Germany at a later stage.
Meanwhile, Hermes Fulfilment, the group’s supply chain unit, has developed a new e-commerce solution increasingly targeting small and middle-sized companies and start-ups. Until now, the company has been rather focusing on companies with bigger shipping volumes.
Called “Smartful – Made by Hermes Fulfilment“, the new e-commerce solution, presented at the e-commerce trade fair NEOCOM last week, is based on SAP and offers a new organisational and IT structure. Its modular structure can dock to different IT systems of the respective customers and thus be applied to smaller businesses as well.
Smartful targets customers operating in the sectors fashion, home, living, consumer electronics and appliances. The product consists of the module storage logistics with the components warehousing and returns management and can be linked to diverse web shops and online market places. This basic package can be extended on request to other modules, e.g. customer care, finance or national and international distribution.
Diverse European delivery countries can also be added in a flexible way. Moreover, various value-added services can be booked on request. These range from the preparation of the goods, gift packaging and multi-carrier solutions to various call centre services and the implementation of secure payment systems.
"Repeated adjustments to the software are eliminated. This makes it easier for the retailer to step into the professional online business. The effort to integrate new customers into the system is significantly smaller now. This in turn reduces the cost for the retailer,” Dieter Urbanke, managing director of Hermes Fulfilment, commented on the new Smartful solution.
"With ‘Smartful – Made by Hermes Fulfilment', we combine our expertise in fulfillment in a customised solution that grows with the order volume of our customers. The aim is to support SMEs in the online business in the optimal way with flexibly eligible components so they can concentrate on their core tasks such as product development and range,” he added.
