GLS Belgium has opened a new €10 million eco depot in Deinze, a town in the Belgian province ofEast Flanders, with the capacity to handle 35,000 parcels a day.
It is the company’s fourth so-called ‘ecological depot’ in Belgium. After nearly six months ofconstruction works that have been completed as scheduled, the new facility is taking over theparcels activities of the sites in Merelbeke, which will continue operating as a freight depot, andof Roeselare.
About 40 employees have been hired for the GLS Deinze depot to handle incoming parcels. It hasbeen designed for more than 120 daily delivery rounds, with the equipment, processes and routeplanning responding to new technical and environmental requirements.
With an area of 4,000 sqm and 120 vehicle gates, the parcel sorting terminal has been built fromrecyclable materials and features a heat pump as well as an installation for rainwater use. Thedepot also incorporates a sorting system with three rows and state-of-the-art parcel monitoringsystem.
The depot has been built with future growth and capacity increases in mind as the terminal canbe extended easily in case of growing parcel volumes, GLS said. Located close to the E40 and E17motorways, the new site is strategically situated between the Netherlands and France.
Through consolidation of volumes in Deinze, GLS said it can set up new direct routes between itsdepots that save time and CO2 emissions. To optimise the routes and provide more time slots tocustomers for delivery and pickup, parcels are distributed after a partial pre-sorting.
Luc De Schrijver, general manager for GLS Belux, said: “The separation of our parcels andfreight activities enables us to improve our service quality and efficiency.”
At its site in Merelbeke, GLS will bundle its operations related to cargo handling for the wholeregion in future. The move of its parcels operations from Merelbeke and Roeselare to Deinze tookplace last weekend, with the service continuing smoothly without any interruption for customers,GLS claimed. At the end of September, the freight division of Roeselare, including its staff, willbe transferred to the new site in Merelbeke and the Roeselare depot will be closed.
