More than 6,000 palletized loads of fresh produce are expected to leave Aldi’s Bardon distribution center each day during peak operations, offering a glimpse of the increasingly automated environment in which pallets and other transport packaging must perform.
Aldi has begun handling fresh produce at its highly automated Bardon Distribution Centre in Leicestershire, moving another major piece of the £500 million facility into operation.
The first pallets of produce, including ginger and avocados, arrived September 16, followed by the first outbound pallet the next day. The numbers will get much larger from here. Once Bardon is fully operational in 2027, more than 1.5 million kilograms of fruit and vegetables are expected to pass through the 1.3 million-square-foot facility each day during peak periods. More than 6,000 pallets of fresh produce will leave daily for Aldi stores across the UK.
Overall, the distribution center will have capacity to handle nearly seven million pallets annually and will serve almost 350 stores. Aldi describes Bardon as the UK’s largest automated supermarket warehouse.
Those volumes also provide some perspective on the demands increasingly being placed on pallets. At Bardon, they are moving through temperature-controlled environments, high-bay storage and automated retrieval systems before being staged for store delivery. Dimensional consistency, load stability and predictable interaction with automated equipment become increasingly important when thousands of unit loads are moving through a facility every day.
Fresh Produce Adds Another Layer
Fresh produce presents a different challenge from many ambient grocery products. Bardon’s produce operation spans three temperature-controlled areas, including chilled storage for products such as apples and carrots and a dedicated banana room.
In the chilled chamber, incoming pallets move into high-bay racking until required for store orders. Automated shuttles then retrieve them for dispatch. Cimcorp is providing automation for the fresh food operation, while Dematic is also an automation partner for the broader Bardon facility.
“Fresh produce is a vital part of our customers’ shopping, yet it presents one of the most complex challenges in grocery logistics,” Jonathan Heaton, Aldi UK’s Regional Managing Director for Bardon, said. “The technology we’ve implemented with Cimcorp allows us to handle enormous volumes while maintaining the precision and care that fresh products demand.”
The scale reflects Aldi’s substantial produce business. The retailer says it sells an average of 2.2 billion individual fruits and vegetables annually, including more than 300 million bananas, 80 million apples and 160 million potatoes.
Where Transport Packaging Meets Automation
The Bardon announcement does not identify pallet requirements, reusable produce crate suppliers or pooling providers, so it would be premature to draw conclusions about the particular transport packaging systems supporting the operation. What it does show clearly is the operating environment those assets must navigate.
Pallets arrive from suppliers, enter automated storage, move between different temperature zones and are retrieved for outbound shipment to hundreds of stores. At the same time, grocery supply chains increasingly use reusable crates and other standardized load carriers. This is especially true for gantry robotics fulfillment solutions such as those offered by Cimcorp. Cimcorp described the project as an example of automation being applied to the particular requirements of fresh food.
“Fresh food logistics present unique operational challenges that require specialised technology and expertise,” Mikko Kumpulainen, System Planning Development Manager and Key Account Manager at Cimcorp, said. “This distribution centre demonstrates how intelligent automation can manage high volumes while maintaining the flexibility needed for a complex grocery environment.”
As automated grocery facilities grow larger and faster, transport packaging has to arrive consistently enough to become an unremarkable part of the automation. At Bardon, that will eventually happen millions of pallet movements at a time.
Primary source: Aldi UK: Fresh Produce Operations Begin at Bardon
Rick LeBlanc, EMBA, is the founder and editor of Reusable Packaging News (subscribe to the free newsletter) and editor of Western Pallet Magazine. A supply chain journalist with more than 30 years of experience, he specializes in pallets, reusable packaging, material handling and related operations. Rick is co-author of Pallets: A North American Perspective and Pallets & Progress: A Collected History of Pallets and Palletized Handling 1922–1945. He is also an advisory board member of the Virginia Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design. Read Rick’s full bio.