Schottel Building New Logistics Center in Dörth, Germany

Maritime propulsion specialist Schottel said Tuesday it is expanding its thruster factory in Dörth, Germany, to include a logistics center with a capacity of around 4,000 square meters.

A contract for the expansion has now been signed with general contractor Goldbeck from Koblenz.

The new building will be annexed to the existing facility and will provide 2,634 square meters of industrial floor space and 1,326 square meters of offices. 

The groundbreaking ceremony for the 7.5-million-euro structure is to take place at the end of this year, with Schottel moving into the new edifice at the start of 2025. Further company investments to the sum of two million euros have been budgeted for the equipment, which includes crane systems and a fully automated warehouse.

The company said that the sum of investment for the annex is being borne by industrial holding company Schottel Industries GmbH that also financed the new factory building back in 2013. 

“The thruster factory in Dörth was implemented solely to service the new-build business,” explains Andreas Block, CEO of Schottel Industries. “Back then, the demands made of a combined warehouse logistics setup for production with the material flows in our after-sales service business couldn’t be satisfactorily met. This situation has since changed so that we can now subsequently satisfy these requirements with the construction of our logistics center.”

Getting rid of double warehousing

To date, goods for the construction of new ship propulsion systems and the spare parts business are handled in parallel in both Dörth and Spay, two places, which are about 30 km apart. 

“By getting rid of this double warehousing system we can vastly reduce the number of interfaces in internal logistics. The processing of incoming goods, order picking and the storage of supplies will become much more efficient,” says Schottel's CEO Stefan Kaul.

Our service business and thus the need for spare parts are constantly growing. In the future, our international customers will profit from a noticeably higher availability of parts, also with unstable supply chains elsewhere,” he adds.  

Sustainability in focus

According to Schottel, the shell and technology of the new building, the industrial insulation, heat pump technology and heat recovery system are all part of a high-quality sustainability concept. 

The statics of the new roof will be designed to hold a photovoltaic system. This will further increase the 700,000 kWh of energy generated each year on the existing building. 

The building site constitutes a sealed warehousing and traffic area that will be repurposed with the new logistics center. It will be adjacent to the existing production hall at ground level. Goods deliveries in particular will be able to be much more efficiently managed in the future, with trucks accessed and unloaded by forklifts at the same level via what is known as a dock leveller. A crane-operated unloading hall will also simplify and speed up the receipt of heavy goods.

About half of the suppliers for the new building will come from the local region, strengthening the local economy. The future flow of traffic will also ensure greater sustainability: at the moment suppliers transport goods to both Spay and Dörth.

In the future, this traffic will only need to be directed to the Dörth industrial area close to the A61 motorway. As a result, commercial traffic will be reduced in Spay, where the warehouse is located at the historic site in the middle of the residential area, Schottel added.

Ultramodern workplaces

The three-story office block will provide space for employees in all departments related to dispatch. In addition, PC workplaces from the existing Dörth office complex will be moved to the new building to free up space there. The utilization concept of another subarea will take into account flexible forms of office organization.

The employees at the service warehouse to be moved to Dörth will be provided with ultramodern workplaces at the new logistics center. Around 300 staff who work in the commercial, technical and industrial departments and in administrative after-sales will remain in Spay. The areas of halls that need renovating shall be put to another use that is as yet still under discussion.

New routing concept for 250 thrusters and hundreds of containers

At its thruster factory in Dörth SCHOTTEL manufactures approximately 250 ship propulsion systems per year that leave the production site on trucks with excess widths of up to four meters. A detailed routing concept has already been drawn up that will ensure the punctual shipment of these new systems and hundreds of other containers of ancillary equipment during the construction phase, Schottel said.