The Freudenberg Group’s specialist in the independent automotive aftermarket has moved into its new home in Weinheim – ahead of schedule.
Berlin’s capital city airport, the “Heart of Europe Project” in Dubai, the new Corteco warehouse in Weinheim: all of these are important construction projects for their respective regions, but only one of them stands out clearly. While the first two exceeded their planned construction times by a considerable margin, the team responsible for the Corteco warehouse completed its project on schedule. Not only did it stay on schedule, it even finished a week ahead of the planned date.
Corteco has been ramping up operations at its new location in Weinheim since June. As of mid-July, both the five European regional locations and existing customers will be supplied from the new European headquarters. The lease for the long-standing facility in Hirschberg will expire after demolition in spring 2026. Thanks to a new office concept, all employees will be located at the new location.
At 14,165 square meters (approx. 152,000 square foot), the new building is significantly larger than the old one and offers an automated storage solution. “The high-bay warehouse alone, which we use as a volume buffer for both the Autostore and future kitting activities, is the same size as the previous warehouse in Hirschberg,” project manager Jan Mittelstädt says. The AutoStore system requires only a third of the space than a conventional warehouse. Twenty-eight robots quickly and efficiently perform physically demanding and routine tasks.
The contents of 10,000 pallets can be stored in the AutoStore, which corresponds to around 270 truck loads. Ninety-eight percent of all items sold by Corteco can be stored on 16 levels in so-called bins, which are reusable plastic containers. Frequently ordered items are stored higher up and are therefore more easily accessible, while the others are stored further down.
So-called ports, i.e., input and output panels on the Autostore, give employees access to the goods, which arrive at the employees’ workstations in accordance with the order – and without additional picking equipment or travel time. “Both automation and migration to the SAP Extended Warehouse Management System are trail-blazing steps for us. At the same time, we keep our employees with their know-how and motivation. The success of the project has made Corteco grow even more into a strong team,” Mittelstädt says.
