Design-First & Customer-First Sortation for a 3PL in Italy

When an Italian third-party logistics provider set out to run sortation inside a brownfield warehouse, they wanted a lean, automation-first operation from day one rather than a large manual setup. Their previous approach to this work was manual, which capped throughput and made accuracy harder to hold at volume. Because Unbox's system is highly energy efficient and reduces CO2 emissions, this rewarded the client with a move to low-energy automation.

Working with a local integration partner, Unbox deployed 20 mobile robots for single-pass sortation, handling up to 1,200 parcels per hour across 180 destinations within a compact 1,826 sq ft footprint. The project went from decision to live in roughly three months, with about six weeks on the ground. An iterative, adaptive design approach let the team absorb evolving requirements across parallel workstreams and keep the build on schedule, while fewer touchpoints mean each parcel reaches its destination in fewer steps, for a faster, simpler, and more reliable flow.