Ceramic tile warehouse of Grupo Pamesa in Castellón

The new Grupo Pamesa project

Founded in 1972, Grupo Pamesa is a Spanish company that designs, manufactures and sells ceramic products to fulfil customer demands, ensuring the general public top quality and designs, as well as excellent pricing. In the last few years, it has achieved extensive growth and become a benchmark company in the ceramic’s sector. In the words of Juan A. Vives López, logistics manager at Grupo Pamesa, “business is booming at Grupo Pamesa and the road ahead shows great potential.” Currently, the group has more than 1,750 employees and, in 2017, it brought in annual sales of 584 million euros (a 26% increase from the year before).

Grupo Pamesa has recently opened a 117,000 m² Logistics Centre 5 in its Onda facilities in the Castellón region where it currently houses more than 80,000 pallets. According to Juan A. Vives López “This new project is being used to manage the increased sales and production our group is experiencing.” One of its main objectives is to “increase the quality of our customer care,” he added.

Racks for ceramic tiles

By day, it receives an average of 1,200 pallets flowing from the Group’s various production plants.“Besides the storage tasks, Logistic Centre 5’s main purpose is order fulfilment,” mentions Juan A. Vives López. Direct access is a key part of preparing such a high number of orders (an average of 400 or 500 picking lines per day).

Plus, being well-organised in all operations is crucial to doing business and to getting the centre’s team working at maximum productivity in their tasks, as well as avoiding several operators from working in the same aisle (which would hinder and slow down their work). Picking is done from the lower levels of the pallet racks. Operators move through the aisles collecting the SKUs listed for each order directly off the pallets. Once the order is ready, it is sent to the consolidation zone where its contents are verified to make sure no mistake was made.

One of the principal rewards of pallet racks is that reserve products are set in the upper levels. So, needed merchandise is always available to be picked and any sort of services stoppage avoided. Ultimately, for Juan A. Vives López, “this is the best way to manage our orders and fully optimise our storage space.”

Mecalux is the storage solutions provider we trust. We have spent a long time working together. It all started when we began growing as a business, at which point Mecalux built us a 32 m high automated warehouse in 1999; and now it is this current pallet rack installation to bolster picking.

Advantages for Grupo Pamesa

• Streamlined picking: the warehouse’s layout is planned out to facilitate order fulfilment which, overall, includes between 400 and 500 lines a day.
• Increased storage capacity: the Logistics Centre 5 holds more than 80,000 pallets (12,944 in racks), which is enough so Grupo Pamesa can deal with foreseen business growth.
• Elevated productivity: direct access to the merchandise guarantees more flexible goods management and a massive flow of incoming and outgoing products.