Movu Robotics was officially launched in September 2023 to bring easier logistics automation solutions to the world’s warehouses. Solutions revolve around shuttle technology for pallet and bin storage and retrieval, achieving unprecedented space utilisation, operational redundancy and throughput scalability. Located in Bromsgrove in the UK and with HQ in Belgium, Movu is the warehouse automation scale-up, part of the well-established stow Group, with over 40 years’ experience in racking and materials handling solutions that exceeds a billion euro in annual revenues.
Chief Sales Officer at Movu Robotics
Noë van Bergen, Chief Sales Officer at Movu Robotics speaks to Warehouse & Logistics News.
What does your role involve on a day-to-day basis?
As a Chief Sales Officer at Movu Robotics, my day-to-day role involves heading up all sales and solution design activities, developing strong value propositions for our customers and executing winning sales strategies.
How would you explain the Movu Culture?
We preach a “can-do” and customer focused attitude. Our Movu Robotics claim sums it up well: ‘no warehouse left behind’. We dismantle the barriers that have prevented many from taking the steps into efficient warehousing. We bring easier, modular, scalable, flexible and efficient solutions that customers need to upgrade their operations. In this way, we want to democratise automated material handling by bringing robotics to companies that would otherwise not find access.
How does this culture assist your clients’ requirements?
Our customers come first. Not only are our technologies to be accessible, but also our commercial and design teams. We aim to be proactive with our designs, search for creative solutions, and think along the same lines as the client. We have the immense advantage that we design and source all aspects of our solution internally, i.e. the robots, software and racking scope. It is often underestimated how impactful the rack design is on the competitiveness of the total design, often from 50-75% of an investment. We steer away from bureaucracy and long bid / no-bid discussions. We aim to have drafted and reviewed multiple concepts with our customer already by the time others have made up their minds. That’s why we have the engineering teams as an integral part of the sales team, to deliver value design right from the start. Whilst being fast, we expect immediate feedback from our customers in return. It helps us to quickly understand under which conditions an investment is viable for the customer.
Do you have direct contact with customers, and get involved developing solutions?
Yes! Of course, we have built an organisation that handles the operational follow-up of all the prospects we have in the pipeline. We have strong regional representation, especially across all of Europe and North America. Regardless, as head of the global sales organisation, I do enjoy spending time with customers the most. Many of them take the effort to visit our headquarters or one of our reference facilities as things get serious. These are crucial visits and within a couple of hours, one gets to understand how a certain project can be transformational to the future of the customer’s business. Ultimately, you don’t want to hear the customer repeat how great you are. You want to find out the one or two things that prevent a client from proceeding with Movu. Do I get involved in developing solutions? I do regularly jump in, yes. Sometimes a bit too much. That’s my engineering DNA coming up. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to the customer’s business case so we cannot afford to quote the wrong design.
Tell us how Movu Robotics is growing in the UK
Movu continues to demonstrate strong growth momentum across the United Kingdom through its dual-channel market approach. The company’s expansion strategy effectively leverages both direct customer relationships and strategic integrator partnerships, enabling broader market penetration.
To support its growing customer base, Movu has strategically established its UK operations centre in Bromsgrove, which serves as the hub for their local service and support team. From this central location, Movu provides comprehensive support for installations spanning from Southampton on the south coast to Lancashire in the north, ensuring responsive and efficient service coverage across a significant portion of the country. The company’s commitment to maintaining a robust local presence underscores its dedication to customer success and long-term market development in the UK. By continuously expanding its service capabilities and technical support infrastructure, Movu is well-positioned to meet the increasing demand for modular and scalable robotics solutions across various industries throughout the region.
What makes Movu Robotics unique in your industry?
We try to transform the market by introducing new shuttle-based technologies that fight the status quo. Being a scale-up, we preserve the entrepreneurial spirit and propose concepts the established players do not offer. On the other hand, Movu is part of the stow Group and is supported by a global network in customer service and 40 years’ plus of industry experience. Combining the reliability of traditional racking with cutting-edge robotics automation, we provide a ‘one-stop shop’ for successful and seamlessly integrated warehousing solutions. We see other players entering the market, but rarely with the competence to integrate both racking with robotics & software together.
What solutions do you offer customers?
Our portfolio features the atlas pallet shuttle for multiple deep storage, the escala robotised 3D bin storage and fulfilment system, ifollow Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) for collaborative picking or transport of pallets and the eligo picking arm robot.
Together with the appropriate supporting software, these sub-systems can be offered as either standalone products or integrated to create a solution to boost customer performance, resilience and service levels.
What sectors do these clients work in?
Our solutions have applications across the board. But specifically in 3rd party logistics (3PL) and the Cold Storage we create a tectonic shift. Why? In case of 3PLs, the pallet shuttle systems have the scalability to increase or decrease throughput to meet changing needs simply by adding or removing robots. Often even in lease or short-term rental to cover seasonality. With traditional automation, e.g. stacker crane systems, this is unthinkable. As a result, many of our 3PL customers bundle multiple clients together, sometimes with very short contract durations, and adapt to market requirements that change overnight. For Cold Storage the advantages are obvious: storage density (plus 30 to 200%) and the low energy consumption (minus 80%) of the equipment are extremely impactful in a cold environment. Other than that, the Movu solutions have proven to be successful in Retail Distribution, Food and Beverage, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing and more.
How can your solutions help?
It is important to seek out practical, accessible systems that will work in the real world rather than futuristic concepts. Despite all their advantages, automated technologies and robotics are perceived by many customers as being complex, expensive and resource intensive with a long lead time for installation.
Movu addresses this issue by bringing easier, ready-to-go automation to the world’s warehouses that are designed to provide easier, modular, scalable, flexible and energy efficient solutions. Our software is a crucial tool for optimising the management, co-ordination and monitoring of these technologies specifically, to ensure a smooth flow of materials.
How future-proof and flexible are your solutions?
This is what we’re all about. Our technology is designed to utilise every cubic inch available. Green or brown field, no space can go lost at times where construction gets increasingly expensive and building permits are hard and slow to obtain. Being able to scale up and down throughput is a fundamental advantage in times where one has no clue what requirements will look like in 5 years, let alone 20. Simple, standardised plug and play solutions that require less engineering reduce costs. The systems have modular design compiled out of a set of building blocks, making them highly scalable. This means installations can start small and then expand. If a robot where to fail, it can be bypassed to minimise disruption.
What new services/solutions are you offering for 2024?
We are rolling out several innovations simultaneously. More and more we integrate picking concepts into pallet store systems, avoiding any need for costly and space consuming conveyor loops. Also, the combination of pallet storage with AMRs inside freezer environments, a unique selling point to Movu, is getting first roll out this year. On the order fulfilment side, Movu’s eligo robot picking arm, automatically piece-picks from a single-SKU source bin and place the individual items into multiple mixed-SKU destination bins. Provided with seamless integration as a pick station option for the escala bin shuttle, the eligo combines advanced software with intelligent grippers and machine vision to provide reliable and effective robotic picking.
What do you see as the biggest opportunities in the coming year for Movu Robotics?
One of the biggest opportunities for Movu Robotics in the coming year lies in helping our clients manage peak demands and seasonal fluctuations more effectively. With our modular and scalable solutions, we offer short-term rentals that seamlessly integrate with their existing fixed automation systems. This flexibility allows clients to ramp up operations when needed, without the long-term commitment of permanent infrastructure changes —automation that truly adapts to their needs.
What are the biggest challenges facing Movu Robotics and your industry?
The industry generally has numerous challenges our solutions solve: labour shortages, cost increases, lack of space, fluctuating throughput, accuracy and quality issues, sustainability and energy. On the other hand, market conditions make large investment tough as economic forecasts remain volatile and interests high. Two reasons why scalable solutions with minimised capex spending are of the essence!
Tell us about a recent project Movu Robotics was involved with.
A groundbreaking project for 3PL company Dematra showcases the pinnacle of automated technology in warehousing: the awe-inspiring 46-metre-tall stow clad rack houses nearly 80,000 pallets effortlessly and runs at full speed: 12,000 pallet movements within a 24-hour timeframe – an international first. At the last Supply Chain Excellence Award in London, Movu and Dematra brought home the trophy for the Best Use of Robotics.
Do you cover the whole of the UK?
Yes, definitely.
Movu Robotics
+32 56 48 11 11
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