Vanderlande Industries has successfully completed expansion of the UPS Worldport parcel sortingsystem four years after gaining a $400 million contract for the project at the Louisville hub.
With the completion, UPS has the world’s largest automated parcel sortation system with acapacity of over 206,000 parcels per hour. This enables UPS to serve air-delivered parcels all overthe world, the Dutch-based manufacturer announced.
Senior executives of UPS, Scott Wicker and Mark Scherrens, along with Joop Broeksteeg, Presidentof the DPP division for North America, and Michiel Peters, President and CEO of VanderlandeIndustries, visited Vanderlande Industries headquarters in The Netherlands to celebrate thesuccessful completion of the project.
A key element of the project was the integration of the new phases. Jim Zimmer, UPS ProjectEngineering Manager, commented: “Noting that the sorting process could not be interrupted while thenew systems were installed was like performing open-heart surgery while the patient was awake.”
The project started in August 2006 when Vanderlande Industries was awarded the $400 milliondollar contract. Over the following years an impressive system was implemented that included64 kilometres of conveyors, 76 POSISORTERS, 174 VERTISORTERS and 11,500 drives.
Everything was delivered on schedule and below budget, Vanderlande declared. Of the over1,800,000 work hours, “no lost time due to incidents” was accomplished. As a result, theWorldport Expansion Project is seen as a great achievement.
Vanderlande Industries is one of the leading equipment suppliers to the worldwide express,parcel and postal industry, and has annual sales of €549 million.
