Multi-million dollar project is up and running: GEALAN opens high-rise warehouse in Tanna

More than two years have passed since construction began at the GEALAN site in Tanna. The new, fully automated high-rise warehouse has now been officially inaugurated, in the presence of numerous prominent guests. And in the meantime, the new 16-million-euro building has also been put into operation.

The exterior has been completed for several months and in recent months the highly complex interior has also been installed, furnished, checked and optimized. The official opening of GEALAN's high-rise warehouse now marks the last major milestone in the development of the multi-million dollar project.   

"A company must be resilient"

The two GEALAN directors took charge of the brief welcome and introduction to the festivities. Ivica Maurović, spokesperson for the GEALAN Board of Directors, emphasized the strategic importance of the new multi-million dollar project:   

"Our drive at GEALAN is to inspire people. Together with our partners and employees, we want to set the framework for the world of windows, innovation, sustainability and customer focus. In a rapidly changing world, this is a real challenge. To survive in difficult times, to continue to invest and attract qualified employees, a company must be resilient. It must also be able to differentiate itself in the market and thus increase its own competitiveness. Only such companies will overcome crises and thus generate growth.

Such growth and the associated further investment are therefore a guarantee for the region to create new jobs for its skilled workers. Our new fully automated high bay warehouse, one of the largest investments in GEALAN's recent corporate history, will support us in all of this. It will help us maintain simplicity, efficiency, speed and a good overview in an increasingly complex world, preparing us for the future in all these areas." 

The large-scale new building can already be seen from afar when approaching Tanna in Thuringia: 125 m long, 26 m high, 22 m wide, is the new fully automated high bay warehouse, which will support GEALAN in future logistical efficiency.  

"Suitable goods are now coming to people" 

Tino Albert, Director of Technology and Finance at GEALAN, describes the major advantages of the new high-rise warehouse in practice as follows:   

"With our new options, we reverse the order picking process: the required goods now come to the employee. Normally these people travel long distances, from 10-14 kilometers per shift, in the warehouse to put together customer orders themselves. This saves time and makes the work more efficient. In addition, the employees' physical strain is significantly reduced by simplified operation and an ergonomic design of the picking stations."

From left to right: district administrator Christian Herrgott (Saale-Orla district), Mayor Marco Seidel (Tanna), Tino Albert (GEALAN Director of Technology and Finance), Ivica Maurović (spokesperson for the GEALAN board of directors), Jans-Jürgen Wittig (architect). 

During the various speeches at the inauguration of the multi-million dollar project, many participants expressed their appreciation. District Administrator Christian Herrgott (Saale-Orla district) thanked GEALAN for its commitment to the region and wished the company all the best for the new logistics era that is now dawning. The mayor of Tanna, Marco Seidel, was not only pleased that the new multi-million dollar project was being realized in his metropolitan area, but also praised the fact that the new building had also become "visually very beautiful and a real eye-catcher." Finally, architect Hans-Jürgen Wittig of the Hof firm of the same name looked back on the planning and construction period with gratitude and pride: "As an architect, you are happy when you can give the project back to the client. To lay out the storage space of this high-rise warehouse: For a ground-floor block warehouse with over 5,000 cassette warehouses, you would otherwise need a floor area of 9,000 square meters."  

Already in use

Even before the official go-ahead, the high-rise warehouse is already in use. About a quarter of the storage spaces in the new building now have containers. Storage will continue in the coming weeks until all 5,000 storage locations are filled. In the meantime, customer orders are already being processed through the new high-rise warehouse - the number of items picked daily is constantly increasing with the number of goods stored. Currently, the system is still being looked after by the logistics project team until all settings and software optimizations have been implemented and the warehouse is largely full. After that, the handover to daily operations is underway.   

In the future, with its new capabilities, Tanna will become the hub of GEALAN logistics: from the Thuringian location, GEALAN will supply all Western European countries of all profile systems in all colors and a total of about 35,000 different product variants.   

GEALAN has invested around 16 million euros in the construction of the new, fully automated high bay warehouse. The high-bay warehouse was built according to the German KfW 45 standard, i.e. it was built extremely energy-efficient from the outset.     

GEALAN's high-rise warehouse in Tanna:

First spade cutting ceremony: May 18, 2022   
Topping-out ceremony: June 21, 2023  
Dimensions: Length 125m, height 26m, width 22m.    
Number of warehouses: 5020    
Load capacity per cassette: 1700 kg    
Power: up to about 70 cassette changes per hour    

The advantages of a high bay warehouse

A high bay warehouse describes a warehouse with shelves from a height of 12 meters. It normally provides several thousand pallet storage spaces, where both flat goods and long goods can be stored. The new high-rise warehouse at the GEALAN site in Tanna is a so-called automatic warehouse for long goods.    

Automatic high bay warehouses or long goods warehouses make the best use of the available space because the height allows a lot of volume to be stored in a minimal footprint. Moreover, there is no need to travel long distances to deliver or transport goods. Thanks to full automation, even large, heavy and bulky goods are served quickly and efficiently by the system.