As manufacturing continues to grow, so do companies and their warehouses. We take a closer look at the ten fascinating warehouses around the world, storing and supplying everything from groceries to aeroplanes.
10. NASA Vehicle Assembly Building, Florida
This warehouse is designed to assemble the largest space vehicles and components for NASA. It covers over 8 acres of land and is located at Kennedy Space centre.
9. Target import warehouse, Washington
Based in the south of Washington State, the Target import warehouse measures over two million square feet, and handles all large overseas deliveries and imports. This is one of 44 different target warehouses.
8. Tesco distribution centre, Ireland
This distribution centre has over 600 employees and is the 11th largest building by volume in the world. The warehouse deals with over 1.5 million cases per week and distributes food and non-food products to 106 different stores.
7. Constellation Europe, UK
Constellation Europe is the largest distribution centre of wine within the UK and Europe. The building covers around 80,000 metres squared, and has over 300 employees. The warehouse accounts for 15% of the wine and alcohol market in the UK.
6. M&S Warehouse, Castle Donington
This state-of-the-art technology distribution centre covers 900,000 square feet of land. The building is fully automated and holds 16 million products, processing a million items a day. This is one of the most efficient warehouses in the UK, and it receives over 2 million orders per week.
5. Michelin Woodruff U70
Located near Michelin headquarters, this distribution centre is the company's largest warehouse. The facility was designed with a focus on sustainability, it has natural species in the site’s landscaping and is located on a site which is 20% protected wetlands. The warehouse measures 3.3 million square foot and the site is around 461 acres.
4. Amazon Warehouse, Dunfermline, Scotland
This distribution centre is Amazon's largest in the UK, with over 1000 members of staff. During the Christmas season this warehouse can handle around 64 sales and orders per second, this is achieved through Amazon’s careful labeling throughout the aisles and shelves as well as the extra seasonal staff. The building is 93,000 square metres in size.
3. DB Schenker’s Warehouse in Germany
DB Schenker, one of the largest logistics companies in the world, has some of the largest and most advanced factories. One of the factories is over 21,000 square metres in size.This factory in Güstrow has over 23,000 shelf spaces in total.
2. Volkswagen’s Car Towers, Wolfsburg, Germany
This automobile factory where customers can pick up their new cars. The facility also has a museum that's open to the public which features tours, guides and a cinema. The biggest attraction of this factory is the glass car storage tower that transports cars from storage to customers. The tower itself holds over 400 cars.
1. Boeing Everett Factory, Washington
This factory is an aeroplane assembly facility that produces all Boeing planes. The factory was first built in 1966 and since then has been expanded 7 time due to increased demand. The building is now the largest in the world and has a volume of over 13,000,000 metres cubed.