The million-euro project is in operation: GEALAN inaugurates high-bay warehouse in Tanna

 The exterior has already been completed for several months, and the highly complex interior has been installed, furnished, checked and optimized in recent weeks and months. The official opening of the GEALAN high-bay warehouse now marks the last major milestone in the development of the million-euro project.   

 

"A company must be resilient"

The two GEALAN managing directors took over the short welcome and introduction to the festivities. Ivica Maurović, Spokesman of the GEALAN Management Board, emphasised the strategic importance of the new multi-million project:   

"Our inspiration at GEALAN is to inspire people. Together with our partners and employees, we want to define the framework for the world of windows, innovative, sustainable and customer-oriented. In a rapidly changing world, this is a real challenge. In order to survive in difficult times, to be able to continue investing and to attract qualified employees, a company must be resilient. Must be able to differentiate itself in the market and thus increase its own competitiveness. Only such companies will overcome the crises and thus generate growth. Such growth and the associated further investments are then also a guarantee for the region to create new jobs for the qualified employees. Our new fully automated high-bay warehouse, one of the largest investments in GEALAN's recent company history, will support us in all of this. It will help us to maintain simplicity, efficiency, speed and a good overview in an increasingly complex world and thus prepare us for the future in all of these areas." 

The large-scale new building can be seen from afar on the approach to Tanna in Thuringia: 125m long, 26m high, 22m wide is the new fully automated high-bay warehouse, which GEALAN will support in terms of logistics efficiency in the future.  

 

"Suitable goods are now coming to the people" 

Tino Albert, Managing Director Technology and Finance at GEALAN, describes the major advantages of the new high-bay warehouse in practice as follows:   

"With our new options, we are reversing the picking process: The right goods now come to the colleague – normally people travel long distances of 10-14 kilometers per shift in the warehouse to put together customer orders. This saves time and makes work more efficient. In addition, the physical strain on employees is significantly reduced by simplified handling and an ergonomic design of the picking stations."

From left: District Administrator Christian Herrgott (Saale-Orla district), Mayor Marco Seidel (Tanna), Tino Albert (Managing Director Technology & Finance GEALAN), Ivica Maurović (Spokesman of the GEALAN Management Board), Hans-Jürgen Wittig (architect). 

 

In various greetings on the occasion of the inauguration of the multi-million high-bay warehouse project, many participants then expressed their appreciation. District Administrator Christian Herrgott (Saale-Orla district) thanked GEALAN for its clear commitment to the region and wished the company all the best for the new logistics era that is now imminent. Tanna's mayor Marco Seidel was not only pleased that the new million-euro project was realized in his urban area, but also praised the fact that the new building had also become "visually very beautiful and a real eye-catcher". Finally, architect Hans-Jürgen Wittig from the Hof office of the same name looked back gratefully and proudly on the planning and construction period: "As an architect, you are happy when you can return the project to the client. To classify the storage area of this high-bay warehouse: For a ground-level block warehouse with a good 5,000 cassette storage spaces, you would otherwise need a floor area of 9000 square meters."  

 

Already in operation

Even before the official starting signal, the high-bay warehouse has already been put into operation. Around a quarter of the storage spaces in the new building are now equipped with containers. The storage will continue in the next few weeks until all 5,000 storage locations are filled. In the meantime, customer orders are already being processed via the new high-bay warehouse – the number of items picked daily increases continuously with the number of stored goods. Currently, the system is still being looked after by the logistics project team until all settings and software optimizations have been made and the warehouse is largely full. After that, the handover to day-to-day business is due.   

In the future, Tanna will become THE hub of GEALAN logistics with its new possibilities: From its location in Thuringia, GEALAN supplies all Western European countries with all profile systems in all colours and a total of around 35,000 different product variants.   

GEALAN has invested around 16 million euros in the construction of the new fully automated high-bay warehouse. The high-bay warehouse was implemented in accordance with the KfW 45 standard, i.e. it was built to be extremely energy-efficient from the outset.     

 

The GEALAN high-bay warehouse in Tanna:

Groundbreaking ceremony: May 18, 2022   

Topping-out ceremony: 21 June 2023  

Dimensions: Length 125m, height 26m, width 22m.    

Number of storage locations: 5020    

Payload per cassette: 1700 kg    

Output: up to approx. 70 cassette changes per hour    

 

The advantages of   a high-bay warehouse

A high-bay warehouse describes a warehouse with shelves from a height of 12 meters. Normally, it offers several thousand pallet storage spaces, where both flat goods and long goods can be stored. The new high-bay warehouse at GEALAN's Tanna site is a so-called automatic long goods warehouse.    

Automatic high-bay or long goods warehouses make optimal use of the available space because a lot of volume can be stored in a minimal footprint due to the height. In addition, there is no need to travel long distances to deliver or transport goods. Thanks to full automation, even large, heavy and bulky goods are served quickly and efficiently by the system.