The location, the height, the automation: how one warehouse got all three right

23/11/2023 - 1 min read

Three decisions. One warehouse.

Barry Callebaut needed 120,000 pallet spaces. WDP found the right site, built 40 metres into the sky, and automated what made sense, without over-engineering the rest.

That’s the story at the centre of this e‑book: how getting location, height and automation right, together, turned a logistics problem into a genuine competitive advantage.

Inside the build: what actually made this warehouse work

The location

Why Lokeren beat every other site: motorway access to the port of Antwerp, a footprint the size of 12 football pitches, and a 20-kilometre radius that kept existing staff on board.

The height

How 80,000 pallets ended up stored vertically in a 40-metre-high automated bay, while 40,000 stayed conventional, and why not every pallet belongs in a fully automatic system.

The automation

Robotic arms, monorail transport, AutoStore technology and digital twins, and how to judge which ones your organisation actually needs.

The sustainability layer

What a BREEAM Outstanding rating actually costs and saves: solar coverage, a ground-coupled heat exchanger, and a gravity-based rainwater system.

The partner ecosystem

How bringing every partner, architect, consultant, contractor and technology provider, to the table from day one kept a large-scale project on schedule, even through a pandemic.

What you’re actually getting

This isn’t a theory piece. It’s a real project, with real numbers, real timelines and real trade-offs, told by the people who lived through it, including WDP’s CEO and Barry Callebaut’s site manager.

Whether you’re weighing up a location, planning capacity for the next decade, or trying to work out how much automation your operation genuinely needs, this e‑book gives you a reference point built on a project that actually got delivered, on time, at scale.