BD International Group  is the official and exclusive distributor of Nike sportswear in six African countries including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

Hudson Holdings has three decades of experience in branded fashion and sportswear, retail and distribution in Malta and internationally representing top brands such as Nike, Converse, Swatch, New Look, River Island, Kiabi & Timberland. In the last few years it has expanded its Urban Jungle sneaker store concept to Italy, Spain, France and North Africa making it possibly the most successful Maltese franchise to be exported.

Nike products are delivered in uniquely barcode-labelled cartons, which were manually scanned and sorted into locations that had been pre-defined for each country. This was a time consuming effort for BDI staff, which, it was recognised, could lead to inaccuracy if a solution was not found. BDI decided that an automated scanning and sorting system would be required in order to maintain their high standards of customer satisfaction.

Denis Gatt, BDI operations manager and George Amato, Hudson Holdings director visited the Intralogistex trade exhibition in the UK in search of a suitable sorter. Stockrail International was chosen as the supplier of the sorter hardware and during discussions with Mark Howarth, Stockrail sales director, it was suggested that Red Ledge, an expert in warehouse management and control systems, was used as the systems integrator.

“We were very happy to be working with Red Ledge” says Howarth. “We could supply the materials handling kit, but the project simply couldn’t be done without the Red Ledge control system”. Alan Wilcockson, Red Ledge director recalls “we had two concerns, the very tight timescale in which BDI required the system, and the large range of box and product sizes that the scanning and sorting system would have to handle, anything from a large carton to a flat-pack.”

Nike sends advance notice of both trailer content and destination of each product to BDI. Using this information, BDI create a sort plan using the Red Ledge system.

Upon arrival, cartons are unloaded directly from the trailer onto flexi-conveyor, then onto a powered roller conveyor. The cartons are automatically separated, scanned and sent to the correct sorter spur. At each spur the cartons are scanned onto awaiting pallets (the number of pallets required at each spur is determined using the Red Ledge sort planner). Once a pallet is full, a message is sent to the warehouse operative who collects the pallet. The Red Ledge system then ensures the pallet is put-away (scanned) to the correct location. The sorter has two modes allowing both carton sorting and individual product sorting, whilst the Red Ledge WMS ensures total traceability of product. Once outbound shipping is organised, the WMS ensures the correct consolidated products are picked and despatched for each destination country.

“This was a massive improvement in both speed and accuracy for us,” comments BDI’s Dennis Gatt. “We were under tremendous time pressure to get the system up and running and despite some unexpected setbacks and some very late nights it was operational just eight days after delivery to our facilities in Malta. The system has helped create new jobs in Malta and it’s great to be doing this whilst using 21st century solutions.”