Bukwang Pharmaceutical(003000) will invest 24 billion won to build an automated warehouse at the Ansan plant. It plans to automate the storage and logistics of pharmaceuticals to improve operational efficiency while securing additional annual capacity to produce 200 million tablets.
On the 27th, according to Bukwang Pharmaceutical, the company will break ground on the Ansan plant automated warehouse this month. Completion and operation are targeted for Sep. next year. The total investment is about 24 billion won.
Once the automated warehouse is completed, the Ansan plant's pharmaceutical storage capacity will triple from 1,500 cells to 4,500 cells. Instead of expanding the warehouse horizontally, it will adopt a vertical high-rise approach, increasing the height from 13 meters to 45 meters.
The warehouse will be equipped with automation facilities such as racks, stacker cranes, and a warehouse management system (WMS). It will also install facilities that comply with good manufacturing practice (GMP) to manage everything in one place, from storing raw materials and finished goods to inbound and outbound shipments.
Bukwang Pharmaceutical expects improved logistics efficiency through automation. According to the company, the processing time for inbound and outbound per cell will be reduced from 10 minutes to 38 seconds. Operating personnel are expected to decrease by about 60%. The seven separate storage sites currently in use will also be consolidated into one.
Higher logistics throughput will enable expanded production capacity. Bukwang Pharmaceutical expects this investment to provide the foundation to produce about 200 million additional tablets annually. By the company's sales metric, that translates into additional production capacity worth about 26 billion won.
The investment is intended to prepare for Bukwang Pharmaceutical's plan to establish annual capacity of 1.2 billion tablets by 2029. The company said that expanding the existing manual warehouse would secure only about half of the storage needed in 2029, so it decided to build a new automated warehouse.