Engineered to Fit, Proven in Peak: Last-Mile Sortation at Scale in Europe

When a European last-mile logistics operator set out to automate parcel sortation across its network, not one of its roughly 50 sites was automated. Sorting was fully manual, which capped throughput, drove manpower and operating cost, and made accuracy harder to hold at volume. Conveyors could not deliver the 1979 destinations density or layout flexibility a last-mile sort demands, and the building itself resisted robotics: metal joints in the existing floor and low wheel-to-floor friction meant robots would slip rather than accelerate.

Unbox deployed 162 mobile robots for single-pass sortation, handling 5,000+ parcels per hour with no conveyors and no unnecessary peripheral hardware. To make the site work, the team engineered an interlocking Allura tile floor that gave the fleet grip without rebuilding the building, alongside new rack designs, new barricading and a reworked end-of-shift flow. Approval came four weeks after first contact, and the system went live ahead of peak season. Fewer touchpoints mean each parcel reaches its destination in fewer steps, for a faster, simpler, and more reliable flow.