Chinese firm Hai Robotics is working with sportswear giant Anta on a third automated warehouse following the success of two earlier projects.

The latest project from Anta, together with dozens of projects ongoing in the footwear and apparel market, demonstrates Hai’s ability in autonomous case-handling robotics (ACR) for warehouse logistics. Anta is said to be the world’s top three sportswear brand. It will launch the project in south China to accommodate surging orders.

The project, to be launched in April in Anta’s new warehouse in Foshan, Guangdong Province, will be the third joint-project between the two companies.

Using Hai’s ACR system, the 9m-high warehouse will reach a higher storage density to offer up to 30,240 locations, with daily throughput expected to reach 128,000 units.

As an official sponsor of the Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Anta has seen surging deals, putting warehouse logistics under mounting pressure.

“Anta sees Hai Robotics as an important long-term partner, as we have shared ambition in smart warehousing,” said Chen Jiancong, general manager of logistics of Anta Group, at the group’s logistics partnership conference, held in its headquarters in Jinjiang, south-east China’s Fujian Province, last month.

Richie Chen, CEO of Hai Robotics, said his company named Anta as one of the top-ten most important global clients, who are entitled to a more tailored service.

“Together we will keep innovating to address more challenging scenarios for the footwear and apparel warehousing sector and bring more added value to our customers,” Chen said.

Hai, named a global AI unicorn by Hurun Research Institute in 2021, has dozens of ongoing projects for top footwear and apparel brands. The company was awarded the best strategic supplier by Anta at last month’s conference to recognise the efficiency the ACR has helped to achieve in the supply chain.

The ACR system was first deployed in Anta’s warehouse in south-western China’s Chengdu, Sichuan province in April last year.

With 25 customised Haipick robots doing case picking and retrieving from shelves to feed goods-to-person picking stations continuously, storage density of the 5.7m-high warehouse increased to offer up to 27,600 locations. It can handle up to 80,000 units in outbound orders per day.

The warehouse, which was previously stretched tight to handle its tens of thousands of SKUs at low picking accuracy, is now feeding the needs from 1200 brick-and-mortal stores with a weekly outbound volume of 60,000 pieces.

The efficiency improvement prompted Anta into a second warehouse automation project with Hai only three months later. A larger robot fleet was stationed in its 3500m² warehouse in Jinjiang. With the redesign of 11-layer shelves inside the 5.7m-high warehouse, the project provides around 20,000 storage locations. The warehouse reached a daily outbound capacity of 200,000 pieces with the use of the Haiport-powered workstation, an automatic loading and unloading machine.

The Haipick ACR system was independently developed in 2015, and is said to be the world’s first of its kind.

Founded in 2016 with headquarters in Shenzhen, China, Hai Robotics has six subsidiaries in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, USA, UK and Netherlands, serving customers from more than 30 countries and regions. With more than 1300 employees, the company has acquired over 600 global patents for core intellectual properties involving positioning, robot control and warehouse management.