AUSTRIA – On 18 June 2018, the foundation stone was laid for the new Grass central warehouse in Hohenems (Vorarlberg / Austria).

The hardware specialist is building a hub for its European production sites for 45 million euros. For the Würth Group company, this is the largest investment in the company’s 71-year history.

The construction company Goldbeck Rhomberg is constructing the central warehouse on a 43,000 square meter site. It will offer a total of 30,000 pallet spaces on 22 levels. Commissioning is planned for the end of 2019 with initially 150 employees. The Grass factories will deliver finished products to the new Hohenems warehouse where individualization, packaging and order-related picking and shipment according to customer requirements will take place.

“Optimizing supply chain management is a key challenge to be successful in the long term,” says Thomas Zenker, spokesman for the Grass management. Regarding the motivation for the largest investment in the company’s history he added, “Our order books are full and market demand is excellent . Due to the strong growth of recent years, however, opportunities have remained unused. The central warehouse solves one of the major bottlenecks and creates the conditions for profitable and sustainable development.”

“Investing in logistics, especially on this scale, is always about growth and development. Thanks to the function of the central warehouse, we are able to significantly reduce reaction times,” says Robert Friedmann, spokesman for the Würth Group’s Executive Board, satisfied and adds: “We are pleased that the company has taken such a dynamic development.”

Grass, with just under 2000 employees at 18 locations worldwide, sold 378 million euros in 2017. With more than 200 distributors in 60 countries, Grass claims to be one of the world’s leading specialists in motion systems.