Feature: Eyeing win-win cooperation, Chinese-owned warehouse in Britain goes robotic

LONDON, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- At a warehouse about the size of two football fields near Birmingham in England, robots were moving through aisles with no operators.

At a time when a head-on collision seemed imminent for two robots, suddenly, one braked and swerved to allow the other one to pass.

ROBOTS HIKE EFFICIENCY

"It's just like they're at a crossroads and, interestingly, they know how to avoid clashing and find another shortest route in a second," Charles Lu, general manager of Elogistic UK, a branch under China's Zongteng Group umbrella, a global cross-border e-commerce infrastructure service provider, told Xinhua.

Gesturing at the QR codes on the ground, he added: "This is their navigation map."

Walking inside the mega fulfillment center, Lu said the idea of going robotic came when his team was mulling how to provide better services as orders surged. In the summer of 2021, the center opened. In contrast to the commonly seen forklifts, the cookie-shaped autonomous mobile robots that could lift 600 kg and proceed 20 km per hour led to a leap in efficiency by handling the put-away, storage and picking on their own.

"In the past our staff workers had to seek storage locations and arrange inventory amongst pallet racks. Now it's the other way round. The shelves, carried by a robot, come to us," Lu said. "It saves time, more than doubles the efficiency, and largely avoids human errors during picking." With 128 robots in place, the center handles 20,000 orders a day.

For visitors, it is a perfect place where they can experience by themselves, instead of reading thick reports about how the cross-border e-commerce has boomed across the world.

On the open ground outside, lorries waited in lines to unload. Inside, robots ran, playing cheerful music, with their human colleagues working in harmony, busily processing the orders.

At the end of 2021, China's total number of overseas warehouses topped 2,000. These mega centers have come under the spotlight as they have helped buffer online sellers and global customers against the shock caused by the supply chain disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic. As they have received and stored shipments of goods in advance, they could still ensure timely deliveries locally, despite the shipping woes abroad.

"Brands emerging during the pandemic pay more attention to the quality of logistics services, and overseas warehouses with stable performance and adhering to local regulations have seen increasing popularity," Lu said. "We support each other. Online sellers see the benefits when we grow and vice versa. It's win-win cooperation."

Now the British branch, with its 16 warehouses including the robotic one, provides services for about 4,000 online sellers, who are mainly China-based. Among them are also British start-ups. A local hockey stick company, for example, has established a long-term cooperation.

"We first knew the brand in its infancy and since then we have grown up together," Lu said. "It offers me a sense of achievement. Things like this are truly meaningful."

CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH LOCAL COMMUNITY

Since December 2015 when the branch was established, it has created 600 jobs for the local community and hundreds more when busy.

Its relationship with the local community went deeper when the pandemic started in early 2020, as the staff donated 15,000 face masks to the local authorities.

"This is a magnificent gesture by a local company in these challenging times and we are already putting the masks to good use in the community where they are most needed to deliver our key services right now," a local official said at the time.

Construction of the warehouses has also generated direct economic benefits worth 50 million pounds (67.7 million U.S. dollars) for the region, said the company.

"It brought a lot of benefits to the community," Adam Copeland, a local resident, told Xinhua at a warehouse. "It provided jobs, which in turn brings tax to the country, to the local government who then can use it for community centers, playgrounds and that sort of (things)."

Copeland lost his job during the pandemic but found a new one in the company which allows flexible working hours. He said he now can earn money for his family and the job enables a good work-life balance. "In this warehouse we work well as a team. Nobody works on their own," he told Xinhua. "Nobody feels left out."

"When we create a job, we see a whole family behind it. Through the employment, we realize that we're supporting many social units," Lu said. "We keep in mind our responsibility, and we aim to deliver."

Eyeing more win-win cooperation, the company has mapped out a plan for a new smart warehouse more than twice the size of the 2021 one to level up the efficiency even further, with more robots and local jobs expected.

Managing the fulfillment centers, "we're in a race against time," Lu said. "With better services we provide, our customers could improve their edge in the competition and, as a result, we grow too."