KNAPP Commissioned to Expand HEPAC Wholesaler Onninen’s DC in Poland

Finnish HEPAC wholesaler Onninen and KNAPP proudly announce that they will deepen their partnership. Onninen’s distribution center in central Poland – with its KNAPP automation solution in operation since 2020 – will be extended by additional technologies from KNAPP to meet the growing need for more storage capacity and picking performance.

Storage locations doubled

As an HEPAC wholesaler, Onninen has been offering appliances and services for a range of different sectors since 1913, including the electrical, sanitary, heating, ventilation and air conditioning industries. Boasting over 3,200 qualified employees and locations in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, the successful wholesaler is a major player in the market. As a member of the Kesko group, the company offers over 400,000 products and operates 34 stores in Poland alone.

Onninen’s state-of-the-art DC near the Polish city of Łódź delivers to all retail stores within 24 hours. Continuous growth meant that the company had to expand their installation. The number of storage locations will be doubled with a high-bay racking and automatic shuttle system covering a total area of 19,000 m² (approx. 204,514 ft²) as well as an outdoor warehouse amounting to 25,000 m² (approx. 269,097 ft²). The new storage space will allow Onninen to accommodate around 30,000 products from more than 300 different suppliers. To implement the expansion, Onninen banks on their long-standing partnership with KNAPP, as Jacek Szymanski, Logistics Director, emphasizes: “For the second time, we have partnered with KNAPP – this time to expand our existing automation system. The first KNAPP project significantly enhanced our warehouse efficiency while enabling us to maximize storage capacity within a limited space. With this extension, we aim to achieve another step-change in operational performance. However, our primary objective now is to increase storage capacity for small-item inventory, allowing us to broaden our assortment with new SKUs and offer customers a wider selection of products with 24-hour delivery. A key challenge throughout this project will be ensuring uninterrupted logistics operations and maintaining high process quality—something we know from experience was a demanding task during the first installation. This time, the complexity is even greater, as new system components will need to be integrated into the existing infrastructure while it remains fully operational. Nevertheless, having successfully navigated previous challenges with KNAPP, we are confident in our ability to execute this ambitious project on schedule once again.”

Seamless integration for more efficiency

One of the particular challenges of expansion projects is the modification of the existing warehouse during on-going operation. “The additional automation solutions have been carefully selected and planned to ensure end-to-end integration into the existing installation. While raising efficiency and performance, our aim was to affect on-going operation as little as possible,” explains Verena Stierschneider, Team Leader in Sales Wholesale at KNAPP. At the heart of the expanded automation solution is the Evo Shuttle, an automatic storage and picking system. At the Łódź location, the system will feature over 80,000 storage locations across six aisles, offering sufficient space for Onninen’s wide and growing range of products. The system is designed with future growth in mind, allowing it to be flexibly extended by additional aisles – without interrupting Onninen’s on-going operation.

Customer order processing will take place at five ergonomic goods-to-person work stations of the Pick-it-Easy series by KNAPP, which are highly user-friendly to support employees in their work and reduce physically taxing tasks. Additional conveyors as well as automatic carton handling, labeling and strapping will further increase the DC’s degree of automation. Existing systems also received an upgrade and further processes were automated, improving overall warehouse performance.

To make order delivery more sustainable and use as much of the available packing volume as possible, the installation will be able to handle many different load units. KNAPP’s software modules KiSoft WCS and SRC round out the automation concept and ensure that all the processes in the warehouse run smoothly.

About KNAPP

KNAPP is the technology partner for intelligent value chains. Headquartered in Austria, the KNAPP group provides all-in-one solutions for automation and digitalization, from production and distribution to the point of sale. Excellent service and long-term collaboration make KNAPP the strong partner behind the success of their customers in the healthcare, retail, food retail, fashion, wholesale and industry sectors.