Industry Roundup: The Moves That Set The Floor
This month: Total Interiors Direct, Interroll, Sentric Safety Group, Hyster, Briggs Equipment, Nuvera, Forth Ports, Lucas Systems, Hai Robotics, BEUMER Group, Calzedonia Group, KNAPP, Skechers, Geek+, Jungheinrich, Crown, TGW Logistics, Swisslog, Nowaste Logistics, AutoStore, Infios, Logistik Schmitt, Infor, AR Racking, RediRack, John Scott Works, Exporta, Cimcorp, Nulogy, Kuehne+Nagel, Toyota Material Handling, Exotec, First Supply, Stadium, Slättö, Dematic, Würth, Movu Robotics, Coppenrath & Wiese, Mascot online, CSi palletising and Chalhoub Group recorded moves in automation, safety, racking, packaging, handling equipment and warehouse software.
The warehouse market is no longer moving in one direction. Automation vendors are scaling robot fleets into the thousands, truck makers are putting hydrogen into heavy handlers, and the less visible trades - racking, mezzanines, reusable packaging, loading-bay locks — are still deciding whether a building actually works. What follows is a reading of the moves that matter to operators, not a product catalogue.
Total Interiors Direct has marked 30 years in business, with three generations of one family still in the firm and a claimed 80 years of combined industry experience. The reporter’s view: fit-out businesses that last this long usually survive because they understand how a warehouse is used, not because they win a single tender.
Interroll has opened a refurbished customer experience centre at its UK headquarters in Kettering, after a sell-out launch attended by customers, integrators and the Mayor of Kettering. Live kit on show included the MCP PLAY modular conveyor platform and the Modular ChainBelt Sorter MC-S, rated at 3,000 to 8,000 items an hour and up to 50 destinations. The reporter’s view: buyers are tired of judging automation from a slide; a working centre in the UK shortens the distance between a specification and a decision.
Sentric Safety Group has launched the Salvo Steering Wheel Lock, a visual deterrent aimed at loading-bay safety for rigid vehicles. The reporter’s view: most serious bay incidents start with a vehicle that can still move, and a simple physical control often beats another procedure on a noticeboard.
Hyster, with Briggs Equipment UK, has put the UK’s first operational hydrogen fuel-cell ReachStacker into service at the Port of Tilbury, part of Forth Ports. The machine uses a Nuvera 60kW fuel cell supporting a 130kWh lithium-ion battery, and is expected to cut more than 107,000kg of CO2 a year. A separate Hyster fuel-cell ReachStacker is also supporting a hydrogen project at Rotterdam Short Sea Terminals. The reporter’s view: hydrogen only becomes a procurement option once it works on a real quay, not in a pilot brochure.
Lucas Systems, founded in 1998, is using AI, machine learning and speech recognition to make distribution centres more data-driven. Its Jennifer voice-directed system, and later work on collaborative robotics, remain the core of the offer. The reporter’s view: voice and optimisation still move more cases in ordinary warehouses than humanoid robots do.
Hai Robotics is to supply more than 1,500 HaiPick Climb rack-climbing robots for a European fashion retailer’s new e-commerce fulfilment centre, described as the largest deployment of its kind. The retailer already runs HaiPick systems elsewhere in Europe. The reporter’s view: the test is no longer whether a climbing robot works; it is whether 1,500 of them stay available on a peak weekend.
BEUMER Group has installed its BG Pouch System at Calzedonia Group’s distribution centre in Italy, extending a business that already spans e-commerce, parcels, mining and airport baggage. The reporter’s view: pouch systems earn their place where the SKU is small, the order profile is messy, and batch picking on the floor has run out of road.
KNAPP is technology partner for a Skechers European logistics centre in Liège of about 230,000 square metres, with more than 3.3 million storage locations and capacity for up to 10 million pairs of shoes a month. The site opens in stages through mid-2030, with European supply from a single location due from late 2028, built around one of the largest Evo Shuttle systems yet. The reporter’s view: this is a capacity bet, not a showcase; the existing Milmort building has simply run out of room.
Geek+ used LogiMAT 2026 to show SkyCube and RoboShuttle in operation. The reporter’s view: shuttle and cube systems are now judged on recovery after a fault, not on the demo cycle.
Jungheinrich has started sales of a new reach truck, and since 15 July 2026 has also been taking orders for the redesigned EFG 2/2i and EFG 3/3i electric counterbalance trucks, up to 2 tonnes, with an integrated lithium-ion battery and a claimed 15 per cent gain in space efficiency. The reporter’s view: the counterbalance launch is the more useful of the two, because it is aimed at the aisle the operator already has, not at a new building.
Crown’s ESR Series is being presented as a reach truck built for stability and speed. The reporter’s view: those two aims usually fight each other, so the specification sheet is the story, not the slogan.
TGW Logistics is offering SmartPocket, a scalable pocket sorter for warehouse sortation. The reporter’s view: pocket sorters suit fashion and small-parts profiles that conveyors handle badly once returns rise.
Swisslog has installed what is described as the world’s first AutoStore AutoCase system, at a Nowaste Logistics warehouse, so cartons can be stored in the grid and retrieved as full cases or sent to a pick station. The installation went in over the summer and is still being tested across carton types before full operation. The reporter’s view: AutoStore’s constraint has often been the case, not the bin; closing that gap changes what the grid can take in.
Infios has extended its partnership with Logistik Schmitt through a yard-management deployment aimed at visibility and control across a complex automotive yard. The reporter’s view: a fast warehouse still fails if the trailer is in the wrong door, and yard software is where that loss usually sits.
Infor has expanded Infor Industry AI, citing research that off-the-shelf AI falls short for two out of three businesses. The pitch is industry context, security and auditability rather than a generic model. The reporter’s view: warehouse AI that cannot be audited will not survive a customer or a regulator.
AR Racking designs, calculates, manufactures and installs industrial racking. The reporter’s view: racking is a structural product; the firms that still do the calculation in-house are the ones operators should be asking about beam deflection and future reconfiguration.
RediRack, a UK manufacturer, supplies pallet racking and related storage. The reporter’s view: domestic manufacture still matters when a damaged upright cannot wait for a container.
John Scott Works designs, manufactures and installs bespoke cold-formed mezzanine floors. The reporter’s view: a mezzanine is often the cheapest extra cubic metre in an existing building, and it fails when the floor loading was guessed.
Exporta supplies high-performance reusable transit packaging for moving and processing goods. The reporter’s view: the cost is not the tote; it is the loss, the wash cycle and the SKU that does not fit.
Cimcorp is strengthening its UK position in warehouse automation and robotics. The reporter’s view: integrators with a local engineering bench close projects; those without them write change-orders.
Nulogy, founded in 2002, sells supply-chain software for contract packing and related operations, with a published customer story at Kuehne+Nagel in Geel. The reporter’s view: contract pack is where WMS logic usually breaks, because the work is short-run and the customer changes weekly.
Toyota Material Handling UK’s I_Site is being used to turn forklift fleets into a source of utilisation, behaviour and safety data, shifting sites from reactive maintenance to planned intervention. The reporter’s view: the connected truck is now an instrument, and sites that still manage it on hours-run alone are leaving the incident record unread.
Exotec has put a Skypod system into First Supply’s distribution centre, supporting a next-morning promise on orders placed by 17:00. After a little over a year, the operator reports picking about ten times faster than the manual process, more than 14,000 SKUs in the system, and room to grow storage fourfold inside the existing racking footprint. The reporter’s view: the cut-off time is the number that matters; a robot fleet that cannot protect a same-evening order is just density.
Exotec is also supplying Skypod to Stadium’s first wholly owned distribution hub in Norrköping, a SEK 300 million automation buy inside a 40,800-square-metre building developed by Slättö’s Evolv platform. The design calls for more than 240 robots and more than 170,000 locations, with operations due in the first quarter of 2028, serving Swedish and Finnish stores after years of outsourced logistics. The reporter’s view: bringing distribution back in-house only pays if the automation is live before the old contract becomes the constraint.
Dematic has been chosen by Würth Australia to install AutoStore at two distribution centres, Yatala near Brisbane and Keysborough near Melbourne, each a little over 10,000 square metres. Commissioning is planned for August and December 2027. Oversized lines stay in manual zones, with Dematic’s warehouse control system tied to Würth’s WMS. The reporter’s view: the split between grid and floor is the adult version of an AutoStore project; a single process for every SKU is how these jobs overrun.
Movu Robotics has agreed a partnership under which Jungheinrich becomes the preferred integrator for Movu shuttle systems and Movu the preferred shuttle supplier, aimed at high-density automated pallet warehouses. Movu shuttles are already in more than 200 warehouses. Live examples include a packaging-materials store for Coppenrath & Wiese and an 11,500-pallet-location warehouse for Mascot online in Almere, running ten four-way shuttles. The reporter’s view: pallet automation fails more often on integration and service than on the shuttle itself, which is why the pairing matters more than another product launch.
CSi palletising has launched the s-Pal, a lean entry-level robotic palletiser priced from €95,000. The reporter’s view: most sites do not need a full end-of-line cell; they need a palletiser that can be justified on one line without a two-year capital case.
Swisslog has also put its IntraMove autonomous mobile robots into the market, with payloads of 600kg, 1,500kg and 3,000kg, navigated without fixed infrastructure and dispatched through fleet software on the VDA 5050 interface. In the Middle East it is progressing a 67,000-bin AutoStore, with 42 robots, at Chalhoub Group’s logistics hub in Riyadh’s SILZ free zone. The reporter’s view: the heavy AMR is the missing link between the grid and the dock; without it, the automated store still ends in a forklift queue.
AutoStore remains the system of record behind both the Nowaste AutoCase pilot and the Würth grids. The reporter’s view: the vendor’s next test is not another bin record; it is whether case-in and pallet-out can be bought as one operating model rather than two projects.
Taken together, the pattern is plain. Scale is concentrating in a handful of automation programmes, while safety, racking, packaging and yard control still decide whether that scale is usable on a Tuesday shift. The operators who treat those as separate markets will keep buying systems that do not meet at the dock.
