Partner Logistics builds distribution centre in St Petersburg

The Dutch company Partner Logistics has asked Royal Haskoning to roll out a number of deep-freeze distribution warehouses for them. One of these centres is planned near the airport at St Petersburg. The Royal Haskoning office in the Russian Federation is acting as the intermediary. Their assignment involves managing the permitting procedure (all building and environmental permits), making specifications for the price-making process with a local main contractor and operational management during the building. Not easy in a country where Russian is still the main language and cultural differences with other countries are great.

Partner Logistics is a logistics service provider that has built distribution centres like this before, including two in Great Britain. So the request from their board was to use the documents drawn up and the knowledge and skill that were acquired in the United Kingdom in Russia as well. Partner Logistics wants to run its own distribution warehouse in St Petersburg with a local partner. The decision to go for a joint venture structure was dictated by the fact that it will make communication with the local authorities easier, and because otherwise no investment is possible. ‘It’s a considerable challenge to manage a task like this when the people you have to deal with only have a little English’, says project manager Zweers. ‘And that makes simple communication tricky. At the moment we are investing heavily in getting our Russian Haskoning colleagues to master the English language.’

Two zones
The highly mechanized distribution warehouse near St Petersburg will be enormous: 32 metres high, 120 metres long and 40 metres wide, and geared exclusively to the Russian market. The building will be divided into two separate zones of -25º C and +4º C. The deep-freeze zone will be operated by Partner Logistics on the ‘pallet in/pallet out’ principle. In particular this involves the storage of already frozen products such as ice cream, chips and chicken for later distribution to retail companies. The joint venture partner will use the +4º C zone for the import, storage and forwarding of European cheeses. The two sections will be strictly segregated because damp is disastrous for the deep-freeze section as it can cause ice formation. If all goes according to plan, the warehouse will be ready at the beginning of 2010.

Technology centre
‘Seeing that it’s usually the same problem, it makes sense to choose a partner in Russia that has already given us full satisfaction,’ concludes Marco Hillebrink, engineering and project development manager at Partner Logistics. ‘So we can continue to build increasingly quickly on the expertise that we already have in house. The Netherlands has to be a kind of technology centre for us with the basic knowledge that can be rolled out everywhere by Royal Haskoning (adapted to local conditions).’ Royal Haskoning still has quite a challenge ahead. What is now still a virgin forest, without infrastructure, electricity or sewerage has to be transformed into a modern distribution centre in the space of eighteen months.

Contact: Wim Zweers
+31 (0)24 3284 528
w.zweers@royalhaskoning.com

Close Window