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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

California Natural Products Opens New Automated Warehouse Distribution Center In Lathrop, California

03/05/2014
California Natural Products, a manufacturer of a broad range of nutritional non-dairy beverages, nutritional drinks, soups, broths, teas, coconut waters and wine in environmentally sustainable flexible packages, unveiled its new 18,000-square-foot state-of-the-art automated warehouse-distribution facility, in Lathrop, California.

The facility was created to increase efficiency while reducing environmental impact by cutting energy use by approximately 80 percent and improving upon the facility's spatial footprint by about 90 percent. The firm said “with the warehouse facility enhancements, California Natural Products is poised to sustain impressive double-digit growth and remain a pioneer in food and beverage packaging.”

"As the leading aseptic packaging organization in North America, we are committed to innovation and spearheading food technology trends," said Pat Mitchell, President/Founder of California Natural Products. "Our new automated warehouse not only helps us to expand our manufacturing capacity and increase overall efficiencies but also helps to lower production costs and minimize negative environmental impacts while saving natural resources. With more and more companies placing a higher value on sustainability, California Natural Products' ability to deliver both high quality and volume makes their switch to sustainable packaging an easy decision."

Located directly across the road from the company's existing food manufacturing and packaging plant, the state-of-the-art warehouse features an enclosed overhead bridge that loops the products loaded onto pallets from the manufacturing facility to the storage warehouse using a high-speed, flexible pallet delivery system that is controlled through PASWare warehouse control system software.

The scalable space accommodates nearly 9,000 pallet positions across 12 PowerStor levels that span 90 feet in the air. With this new system, the loaded System Staging Carts in the PowerStage system travel up to 600 feet per minute, nearly doubling cost efficiency over standard warehouses, maximizing space utilization, and reducing operating expenses, while also decreasing the carbon footprint. Furthermore, based on cutting-edge robotics operating throughout the entire warehouse system, the fully automated cart and lift-based storage and retrieval system will help improve inventory control as well as safety and security systems by reducing human error.

"In designing our warehouse solutions to fit the specific needs of California Natural Products, we kept the company's aggressive growth strategy and commitment to sustainability front-of-mind, as well as the need to house products from dozens of national brands—all with plans to continue to grow," said Rodney Tipton, President of Power Automation Systems. "Our revolutionary design addresses California Natural Products' ongoing needs and keeps the company on the cutting edge, by providing for high throughput of large quantities of multiple size loads, while simultaneously improving productivity, speed, accuracy, and flexibility throughout the warehouse system."

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