Arvato Expands in Louisville With 970 KSF Warehouse

Arvato, a German-based supply chain and e-commerce service provider, has expanded its U.S. network with the opening of a 970,000-square-foot warehouse in the Greater Louisville, Ky., area.

The new warehouse is in Shepherdsville, Ky., expanding the company’s existing campus. Arvato now operates four distribution centers encompassing more than 2.4 million square feet in the Louisville region.

The facility adds more than 300 jobs in the region, bringing the campus’ total to 1,200 workers at peak employment. The company, which provides comprehensive logistics services for customers in the consumer products, technology and healthcare industries, expects the job numbers to grow in the future.

Mitat Aydindag, president of Arvato North America, a division of Bertelsmann, said in a prepared statement Louisville is a key location for its U.S. operations because of its convenient geographic location, excellent infrastructure, high-capacity highway system and connection to a global freight hub, which both help with shipping by air or land.

Aydindag said the location is complementary to the company’s West Coast locations, allowing Arvato to fully cover the U.S. with its services. Arvato has nine other U.S. locations including Ontario, Calif.; Valencia, Calif.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Pleasant Prairie, Wis. and Memphis, Tenn.

Expanding partnership with HARMAN

The new warehouse will handling the entire logistics and fulfillment operations for two tech industry customers, including warehousing and distribution to end customers and retail partners, transport management and extensive value-added services. In December, Arvato announced one of the companies taking space would be HARMAN International, a global leader in audio and automotive technology, and a Samsung subsidiary. Arvato has not disclosed the second tenant at the facility.

The strategic partnership with HARMAN is an expansion of a relationship Arvato has had with the company in the EMEA market. The Kentucky site will serve as HARMAN’s central Americas location. Under the strategic partnership, Arvato is responsible for Americas logistics, including transportation management; secure, value-added warehousing; inventory management; retail compliance and e-commerce, merchandising display management and fulfillment to every channel in the Americas region. In total, Arvato now operates four warehouse locations in the Americas, Europe and Asia for HARMAN’s B2B, B2C and D2C activities.

Automation solutions

HARMAN cited the state-of-the-art fulfillment infrastructure installed at the new Shepherdsville location for contributing to the decision to partner with Arvato. The warehouse has 1.4 miles of conveyor technology and an automated sorting system that can process 3,600 master cartons per hour. A high-speed automatic carton erector and sealer were also integrated, as well as a CMC CartonWrap solution. The automatic carton packaging system is capable of creating custom boxes for e-commerce orders in the ideal shipping size.

Arvato said other highlights include a robotic label applicator that automates the printing and application of multiple labels. It is designed for different carton sizes, offering maximum flexibility. Each of the eight devices used can apply up to 1,200 labels per hour. Arvato said it will also use Stretch robots from Boston Dynamics for unloading floor-loaded trucks and containers to significantly speed up the unloading process and move goods through the warehouse faster.