Coupang unveils its fulfillment center with robots, the largest warehouse in Asia

Coupang e-commerce company based in Seoul, South Korea, has unveiled its newest fulfillment center in Daegu. The facility is also said to be the largest warehouse of its kind in Asia.

Coupang’s Daegu fulfillment center is not an ordinary one, as it was fitted with robots to help with the workload. It is a hi-tech fulfillment center that offers a glimpse of what the future logistics would be like.

The company showcased its new facility late last week, and it definitely boasts of advanced automation technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI). The Korea Times reported that this logistic system that uses AI automation to handle all delivery processes - starting from the collection of orders to packaging and sorting before shipment is one of the exceptional technologies in the hub.

It was learned that the Korean e-commerce firm put in more than KRW320 billion, or about $255.8 million, to build this fulfillment facility in Daegu. It is so wide that its size was said to be equivalent to 45 soccer stadiums.

Inside the warehouse, there are driverless forklifts, sorting bots, and automated guided vehicles or AGVs. These are just some of the impressive logistics technologies to be found here.

The entire building has a total of 10 floors aboveground, while the number of floors underground was not specified. The seventh and ninth levels are filled with 1,000 AGVs for stocking and collecting of goods that were ordered online. Previously, human employees did this work, they run around and climbed ladders to find items on the shelves.

“AGVs reduced the total workload by 65 percent as the robots deliver the shelves with hundreds of products to their designated station within an average of two minutes,” Korea Joongang Daily quoted Kim Chun Sung, the senior manager at Coupang Fulfillment Center, as saying. “The robots eliminate all of the human labor going into sorting.”

He added, “They sort and move the products based on the regions in just a few seconds, recognizing the barcode of the address affixed to the package with a scanner and they are perfectly optimized for our Rocket Delivery service.”