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Unitechnik brings speed to the poultry industry

02.09.2025

When 140,000 chickens are cut up, packaged in numerous variations, labeled, and shipped every day, logistical finesse is required. To lay the foundation for further growth, the family-owned company Borgmeier Frischgeflügel has decided on a comprehensive investment project at its headquarters in Delbrück-Schöning.

In Unitechnik, Borgmeier has found a partner that not only has the necessary automation expertise, but also understands the special requirements of food logistics – and has worked with the customer to implement a high-performance, future-proof solution.

What began in 1903 as a small farmstead is now a powerful player in the German poultry industry: Borgmeier Frischgeflügel. Based in Delbrück-Schöning in East Westphalia and with around 630 employees, the family-owned company stands for consistent quality, established structures, and fresh ideas. Now in its second generation, Borgmeier combines traditional craftsmanship with industrial efficiency – which translates into annual sales of €220 million, over 300 customers in Germany and abroad, and a product range comprising more than 10,000 items. Whether it's a weekly market stall or a grocery chain, the goods must arrive at the customer fresh, on time, and individually packaged. The logistical requirements are correspondingly high.

When processes reach their limits
With Borgmeier's continuous growth, the existing logistics structures increasingly reached their capacity limits in 2021. Order picking and shipping processes were based on manual procedures with hand scanners and were limited by spatial constraints. At the same time, the poultry industry requires a particularly high level of process reliability: the daily processing of around 140,000 animals at Borgmeier, the large number of cuts and variants, and the highly customer-specific packaging and labeling requirements place high demands on efficiency and flexibility. Added to this are short response times – 70 percent of orders are placed the evening before, 30 percent on the same morning – as well as strict requirements in terms of the cold chain and traceability. »The big challenge in our day-to-day business is that with a natural product like poultry, we only know exactly what we have available during production,« explains Sebastian Borgmeier, assistant to the management at Borgmeier. »At the same time, many customer orders have only been available for a few hours. This requires maximum flexibility combined with the highest level of process reliability.« Against this backdrop, a comprehensive modernization of intralogistics was inevitable. The company was looking for a scalable, fail-safe, and future-proof solution to ensure logistical performance.

Maximum performance meets food logistics
After an intensive selection process, the general contractor Unitechnik impressed with its technical expertise, process knowledge, and partnership-based project approach. »Above all, it was important for us to find a partner on equal footing who understood our requirements,« says Sebastian Borgmeier. »Unitechnik contributed excellent ideas during the planning phase and helped shape the current solution.« In addition to its experience in the food industry, the decisive factor for Borgmeier in awarding the contract was the offer of an integrated complete solution: Unitechnik planned, delivered, and implemented the entire intralogistics system, including warehouse management software, control systems, and mechanics.
Thecore of the new system is a highly automated shuttle warehouse with 31,200 container storage locations. Four aisles, each with 26 levels and a total of 104 shuttle vehicles, enable highly dynamic and sequenced storage and retrieval – with a capacity of around 3,000 containers per hour. This level of performance was only possible with the help of sophisticated detailed planning and intelligent material flow control by the UniWare warehouse management system. In addition, Unitechnik installed a mobile racking system for the deep-freeze storage area with around 4,700 pallet spaces.

Trays ensure high process reliability
Pallets, crates, and cartons are automatically transported to the new logistics center via a steel bridge. Pallets are either made available directly in the shipping area or stored in the deep-freeze warehouse. Cartons and crates make their way to the shuttle warehouse, which functions less as a traditional warehouse and more as a highly dynamic sorting buffer. The goods usually only remain there for a few hours.

To guarantee the highest possible process reliability, cartons and crates are automatically placed on trays. This allows the subsequent conveyor and storage technology to work with a uniform load carrier. Cartons are additionally strapped before being placed on the trays. The system then stores the trays with their loads in the shuttle warehouse. When an order is called up, the corresponding goods carriers are retrieved in exactly the required sequence, separated from the tray, and transported via spiral conveyors to the workstations below. There, the order pickers stack the goods on automatically provided pallets according to the instructions of the UniWare warehouse management system. The lowerable pallet station ensures an ergonomic working height at all times.

The entire system is controlled by Unitechnik's proprietary warehouse management system, UniWare. It not only handles warehouse management, but also material flow control and system visualization. Employees receive clear instructions via operator dialogs and forklift terminals. Thanks to this integrated software platform, all processes can be mapped transparently and flexibly.

Food logistics requires flexibility and high availability
The integration of labeling lines into the overall system enables a quick response to customer-specific labeling requirements for self-service packaging. The pallets formed vary greatly in terms of the number of different items they contain, depending on whether they are palletized for weekly market traders or bulk buyers. This illustrates the different requirements that retailers place on food producers.

The majority of poultry products are shipped on the day of slaughter. »The extremely short time window in combination with the required performance places the highest demands on the reliability of the system,« explains Yusuf Kaya, Key Account Manager at Unitechnik. »We were able to achieve this through a high degree of redundancy: conveyor lines, lifters, strapping machines, workstations, and tray and pallet handling – everything is designed with multiple systems and arranged on nine levels.«

Joyful Season: System Proves Its Worth at the Holiday Peak
The progress is also clearly evident in day-to-day operations: New employees now only need a few days to get up to speed, instead of several weeks or even months. Picking errors can be largely ruled out. The ultimate test was last Christmas, traditionally one of the busiest times of the year for Borgmeier. In recent years, employees have sometimes worked late into the evening to pick orders in the run-up to Christmas. In 2024, the new logistics center marked a turning point: processes were more structured and the additional workload for employees was significantly lower. »The fact that we were able to pass this stress test so smoothly with the new logistics center confirms that we chose the right partner for this project in Unitechnik,« explains Sebastian Borgmeier. »The new logistics center is a real milestone for us: it strengthens our competitiveness and offers the flexibility we need to continue growing.«