Pictured above left to right :
Tim Flesher, the Ministry of Defence's Deputy Chief Defence Logistics
Marcus Watson, Former FSL Services Director
A joint £350,000 investment between naval support company Fleet Support Limited (FSL) and the Ministry of Defence confirms Portsmouth Naval Base at the forefront of logistics and warehousing operations on the South Coast.
A new state-of-the-art automated sorting/packaging line has been installed at the Naval Base logistics facility, which is operated by FSL for naval and commercial customers. This will maximise efficiency and offer a state of the art service to Portsmouth Naval Base and external customers.
It is the first joint investment by the two partners and will further enhance FSL’s round-the-clock operation distributing naval stores to ships and other locations worldwide.
The investment will also help FSL to attract additional third party business to the facility – a key driver in maximising the value derived by the MoD for its long term investment in the high tech facilities at Portsmouth. Several commercial customers already use the warehousing space within the Base, benefiting from the secure environment and some of the best automated storage facilities in the region.
FSL Services Director Marcus Watson explains: "The new sorting and packaging line will be faster and more reliable than the manual system it replaces. This is the first joint FSL/MoD investment in the logistics area and will further improve the quality of our service to the RN and bolster our opportunities to attract more commercial business."
FSL manages over 20 acres of warehousing at the base, with the facilities capable of handling two million transactions a year.
The new packaging line, which was formally opened by Tim Flesher, the Ministry of Defence's Deputy Chief Defence Logistics, replaces the previous manual system where items were sorted ready for packaging.
The Dutch-manufactured conveyor system processes packages when they are received from the primarily robotic warehousing area. Data is scanned into the system and the packages travel along a conveyor before being automatically diverted down the relevant customer chute.
Nineteen chutes feed more than 100 bins, where items are then boxed and despatched from the adjacent distribution centre.
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