Insight

Fastbolt Group has made another step towards intralogistics automation, with its new innovative automated compact storage system, the Jungheinrich PowerCube, which was successfully implemented at the end of May – enabling the company to efficiently handle smaller stock quantities and provide scalability for the future. 

Supplying over 2,000 distribution customers all over Europe – via its three warehouses in Germany, the UK and Portugal – Fastbolt made the decision in 2023 to invest in an automated bin storage system at its central warehouse in North Rhine-Westphalia, where all its products were held within its narrow aisle pallet warehouse, with 19,000 pallet locations.

As part of a building extension completed at the end of 2024, along with additional offices for growing teams in product management and software development, a newly constructed ‘Hall 4’ enabled Fastbolt to relocate its growing packaging department for private label packaging, as well as some pallet racking. This freed up ‘Hall 3’ to house the PowerCube – making Fastbolt the first company in Germany, and second company overall, to install and operate the innovative automated compact storage system. In its initial design the new system provides over 18,000 bin locations, with each bin providing a maximum loading capacity of 50kg – with the possibility to segment bins and hold up to four different items. 

As part of the PowerCube, five robot shuttles transport the bins underneath the channels within the system, with a speed of 4m/s, going to and from three workstations where stock loading and order picking is carried out. In addition, the PowerCube is fully integrated into Fastbolt’s existing intralogistics systems and serves as an efficient small stock quantities addition to the dominating narrow aisle pallet warehouse. The PowerCube system has also enabled Fastbolt to free up and transfer stock from 35% to 40% of its pallet locations, which can now be used as additional stock capacity for full pallets.  

Creating more stock capacity

The PowerCube solution also provides Fastbolt with ideal scalability for the future, with the option to enlarge the frame to allow for more stock capacity through more bins or by adding more robot shuttles to increase the number of bin movements within the system. While the stock level of the PowerCube is gradually increasing, Fastbolt consequently has been able to create the space in its pallet warehouse to fade out its external warehouse, which historically had to be managed to a constant level of excess stock. This helps to ensure all Fastbolt stock is accessible on the same day – enhancing customer service. 

“The installation of the PowerCube helps us to find solutions for a good number of challenges we had identified for our strategic planning,” explains Ekkehard Beermann, managing director at Fastbolt Group. “We knew that we needed more stock capacity for all the planned product range extensions to fit in logistically. At the same time, we needed to gain efficiency in our intralogistics both for storage and material flow. Whereas in the past we have always added storage capacity by building more pallet racking, without allowing more efficient handling of smaller quantities, the PowerCube now not only automates a good part of our picking process, but most importantly helps us to condense smaller stock volumes from thousands of pallet locations.”

 Ekkehard continues: “We chose the Jungheinrich PowerCube as it represented the best fit to our existing building and infrastructure, as well as its maximum loading weight of 50kg per bin. We are happy and proud that we have successfully started to operate the system and can start to gradually widen our product range to increase added value to our distribution customers.”

This product range expansion includes the extension of nuts and other products with hexalobular recess, as well as an initial stock range of zinc flake coated products, consisting of hex bolts, set screws and hex nuts – responding to an increasing demand from customers all over Europe. On top of these expected new arrivals, Fastbolt’s product management is continuing to develop more new items for its future stock range.

Growth supported by FBonline

Fastbolt’s growing and more competent range of stock items is supported through its eCommerce solution developed in-house – FBonline. The portal, which has become an essential element of the buying processes of thousands of fastener buyers within the European fastener distribution market, will also see some changes and upgrades this summer. These upgrades include a wider product range accessible even faster and more intuitively, as well as enabling customers to not only check current and future stock and prices, but also efficiently cover all commercial aspects of daily business with Fastbolt 24/7. This includes order placement, alternative shipping addresses, price negotiations, order and delivery monitoring, tracking and full documentation, as well as benefiting from various connectivity solutions to customer purchasing processes by EDI, API or email. 

“We are happy to see FBonline where it is today. It already handles the majority of Fastbolt’s daily order volume, but we still have a list of features and innovations that we plan to develop for our customers in the next few months,” reports Ekkehard. 

In addition to FBonline, Fastbolt uses its digital excellence to best manage the constantly growing level of regulatory requirements involved in global trade, such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) regulation. The in-house team of software developers therefore play a key role in Fastbolt’s strategy to strengthen its position in the market and to get ready for the beginning of the definitive implementation phase of CBAM in early 2026. 

Ekkehard explains: “While the final decision on the recently proposed simplifications of CBAM by the European Commission has still not yet been taken, and precise implementing regulations and decisive elements of the calculation formula for CBAM cost have still not yet been published, importers such as Fastbolt remain in a situation of uncertainty and find themselves with only little plannability.” 

Fastbolt is therefore focusing on finalising the design of its CBAM processes for its multiple warehouses and their imports as of January 2026 and has chosen, once again, as it did with its own online portal for purchasing and inbound logistics, to use a system-based and
in-house developed approach for this issue. “We know that without intelligent digital solutions we will not be able to manage today’s and future challenges of modern trade. Regulatory changes nowadays come more often and have direct and strong impact on established business models with global supply chains,” states Ekkehard. “We found handling CBAM, and its impact on our processes within various departments of our company, manually was not a valid option, so we decided to add the CBAM administration to our purchasing software and supplier portal so that relevant data can be made available to all different areas of our business.”

With the investment in the Jungheinrich PowerCube, the planned expansions of its product ranges, as well as the upgrades to its FBonline eCommerce system, Fastbolt is taking important steps to strengthen the supply chain for fastener distributors.