B2C parcels specialist Hermes has tripled sorting capacity to serve Berlin with the opening of a new €53 million logistics centre near the German capital today.
The new facility at Ketzin in Brandenburg, which has created about 250 new jobs in the small town some 45km west of Berlin, is the third of nine planned new logistics centres under the ongoing €300 million investment programme to increase the parcel firm’s network capacity across Germany by 2020.
The 10,000 sqm Ketzin facility will be able to sort up to 250,000 shipments per day, which is roughly three times more than the company’s previous capacity for the Greater Berlin area. In future, the bulk of Hermes’ deliveries for Berlin, Potsdam and the surrounding Havel region will be made from the new logistics centre.
Matthias Plack, General Area Manager Berlin at Hermes Germany, described the new facility as a milestone for the company’s capabilities in the region. "The number of shipments has skyrocketed in and around Berlin in recent years, and the construction of a new distribution centre with high handling capacity was inevitable.
“With the new location, we are ideally positioned from now on, including to take on more volumes in the region. Traders from Berlin and Brandenburg will benefit from faster turnaround times, which of course has a positive effect on delivery times.”
Dirk Rahn, Operations Manager at Hermes Germany, emphasised that the Ketzin logistics centre will be “one of the core parts” of the company’s future logistics network in Germany.
“In view of the continuing nationwide boom in e-commerce, we already had to ask ourselves years ago how we could handle the significant increase in volumes at our locations in the future. The construction of several large logistics centres throughout Germany was and is a fundamental for us in this context. After all, we want to continue to be one of the leading parcel service providers in Germany – but that requires investment."
Hermes said that the new Berlin-Brandenburg logistics centre will be able to cope with substantial volume growth expected in the next few years. For example, a double-deck sorting system from Vanderlande will process up to 25,000 parcels per hour at a speed of 2.5 meters per second. With 116 vehicle doors, Hermes will be able to speed up loading and unloading times, and will thus be able to offer later cut-off times and faster deliveries.
Like the first two facilities at Bad Rappenau and Mainz, the new logistics center in Ketzin was constructed by Hamburg-based logistics property company ECE, which is responsible for building all nine new Hermes logistics centres across Germany.
