Robots take over more mail duties at Australia Post
Robots will handle more of the nation’s mail with a new Australia Post facility in Brisbane’s Redbank opening a $240 million automated distribution centre.
The Goodman Group-developed facility will put into practice the kind of automation that has been promoted for decades, fostering automated parcel movement across the postal network.
Goodman, the industrial property powerhouse, is teaming with Australia Post to create the centre, which will also support online retailing and could become a model nationally for the postal service and its private delivery rivals that focus on last mile delivery.
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Australia Post chief executive Christine Holgate has flagged a focus on parcels delivery, with this business on the rise even as revenue from letter delivery is in decline.
Goodman Australia general manager Jason Little says customers want warehouses capable of housing their increasing investment in technology.
“Increased consumerism, automation and e-commerce is driving the growth of our business, and that of companies like Australia Post,” Little says.
Like planned facilities for e-commerce giant Amazon, the complexes are taking on ever-greater scale and complexity.
The Australia Post facility is the size of eight football fields and loaded with technology such as automated guided vehicles, robotic arms and parcel pickers.
The facility, at Goodman’s Redbank Motorway Estate, will be able to process 700,000 parcels a day at full capacity.
It will have two Beumer high-speed sorters that can process more than 50,000 parcels an hour, four robotic arms that can clear 320 cages an hour, a parcel picker that can move 2500 parcels an hour, and 23 AGVs that can lift and move objects weighing up to 1.4 tonnes each, then place them down to an accuracy of about 5 millimetres.
“Australians love online shopping, spending $27.5bn nationally online last year, and this facility will be able to process those parcels more efficiently right across the network — getting it from merchant to customer quicker,” Australia Post chief operating officer Bob Black says.
“What we’re also finding is that shoppers are jumping online earlier to snap up deals in annual online sales events, which means we’re getting bigger volumes, earlier in the peak period.”
Australia Post will deliver up to 3.5 million parcels in the pre-Christmas rush and it is pumping $900 million over three years into infrastructure and automation.
About 500 workers will be based at the new facility and, once Redbank is fully developed, Goodman’s investment in the key Brisbane area will top $1 billion.
Australia Post has a 15-year lease on the 50,000sqm facility. The overall estate also houses logistics companies TNT-FedEx, DB Schenker and Northline.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
