Supermarket chain Hoogvliet has built a new BREEAM Outstanding distribution centre, at the Prisma business park in Bleiswijk. The new distribution centre with a floor area of around 80,000m2 (over sixteen football pitches) consists of logistics facilities for dry groceries, fresh produce, chilled and frozen goods and so-called cross-dock flows. Packaging, the service centre including offices and training and education facilities and the Hoogvliet Butchery are also part of the new-build project. The Hoogvliet bakery already present on the building site, built in 2015, has been integrated with the new building for a number of installations such as fire protection and access control but also compressed air compressors, ICT infrastructure such as MER, emergency power, backup cooling for the MER, etc.

The essence of the new distribution centre is automation of the logistics process. Hoogvliet had been in talks for several years with Witron, a German supplier of mechanical handling equipment, about what the layout of the automated logistics process should look like. Witron has already realised dozens of similar food retail distribution centres in Europe, but had not yet delivered similar references in the Netherlands.

The Design & Engineering process started for Arcadis in mid-2016-2017 with design explorations which possibilities and impossibilities appeared to be feasible in integrating the building functions distribution centre (including packaging, receiving, storage unrefrigerated (dry groceries), storage refrigerated (fresh products, frozen products and fruit & vegetables), cross-dock and shipping) with the new service centre (Hoogvliet’s head office for the board, management and central staff services) and the Hoogvliet Central Butchery and all this next to the recently completed Hoogvliet bakery. This combination of functions in unique in the Netherlands.

On 10 June 2021, this project was certified with a nice score ”Outstanding” of 93.70%. C2N contributed to the role of BREEAM Expert during this project. By supervising the construction site credits during the construction phase and supporting Arcadis by writing expert reports, this beautiful distribution centre was able to achieve the certificate.