With more storage space and faster handling of beer bottles and cans, Plzeňský Prazdroj (part of Asahi Europe & International) has successfully opened it’s new, fully automated warehouse in Plzen, Czech Republic. In the largest investment (780 million Czech Crowns) in our Pilsen brewery since 2006, it will enable Prazdroj to supply customers quicker, and more sustainably.
"During its 180 years of existence, Plzeňský Prazdroj has always tried to bring innovations in order to provide the best products and services. When brewing beer, we follow the original recipes and procedures, but to make the work easier and to ensure the highest quality, we use the most modern technology available, which help us in the packaging of our products and in our warehouses. The new, fully automated warehouse is such an example. It will speed up processes, help our people with demanding work, and, thanks to the technology used, will also reduce our overall carbon footprint," said Dragos Constantinescu, CEO of Plzeňsky Prazdroj.
The new warehouse is located in the Pilsen brewery on an area of 10,000 square meters, which corresponds to the area of 1.5 football fields. The main building consists of a self-supporting rack warehouse, which, thanks to the technology used, is Prazdroj's most modern warehouse and one of the most modern warehouses of this type in the Czech Republic. The goods from the bottling line are transported by an automatic pallet mobile system consisting of 28 trolleys (so-called gondolas), which move along tracks with a total length of over half a kilometer.
Bottles and cans are moved by automatic crane stackers directly in the warehouse. These are equipped with recuperation and thus save electrical energy. The unique self-supporting shelving system can store up to 16,000 pallets (approximately 18,000,000 beers). The total capacity of storage space in the brewery has thus increased by more than 20%. "Thanks to the shelving system and the way goods are transported between them, we will not only save space and costs for transporting goods, but also reduce the amount of emissions produced, which fits into our sustainability strategy. The use of rails greatly reduced the need for forklifts. In the warehouse, we now use them only for loading the trucks themselves, and they now run on electricity instead of LPG. This alone does not produce approximately 500 tons of CO2 per year," noted warehouse manager František Holý.
In the future, the brewery plans to install solar panels on the roof of the building, which will provide up to 30% of the warehouse's total energy consumption. Three retention tanks are built underground, which capture up to 838 m3 of rainwater. This could fill almost two twenty-five meter swimming pools. The brewery will reuse the rainwater for cooling the production technology in the adjacent Gambrinus brewery. The new warehouse will increase the capacity of shipping goods by 50%. "Thanks to this, it is now possible to unload up to 290 pallets per hour, which corresponds to loading almost 9 trucks. Thus, we are able to handle a larger number of shipments and thereby supply our customers more quickly," added Holý.
A new bottling line for returnable glass bottles will be built on the site of the old warehouse in the brewery. Bottled beer has long been the best-selling within Prazdroj's portfolio, and from the point of view of environmental impact, returnable glass bottles are the most economical choice in the packaged beer segment. That is why the brewery wants to focus on them in the future as well. The new line should be put into operation at the end of this year.
