Tibbett and Britten South Africa is a third-party logistics provider (3PL). They have a distribution centre in Boksburg (Johannesburg) for multiple 3PL-customer contracts. The facility takes care of the distribution of Fast Moving Consumer Goods by means of an automated material handling system from Vanderlande Industries.  

In the distribution centre, goods arrive on pallets either from the nearby factory of the largest customer contract or from remote other sites. In the factory, pallets are loaded onto the pallet pre-loading system and subsequently transported to the distribution centre by trucks with automatic conveyor loading. In the distribution centre, these pallets are automatically unloaded. Pallets coming from the remote sites are handled by conventional trucks. Via the pallet conveyor system, pallets are conveyed to the storage drop-off points, where they are taken off and stored by forklift trucks.

In the outbound flow, fast-mover and medium-mover cartons are picked in batches in a pick-to-belt system. Full cartons are conveyed onto 13 pick-to-belt lines. Slow movers and non-conveyable items are picked manually. These cartons are merged with the other cartons via a 14th induct station.

All lines convey the cartons to a sortation system, where the cartons are sorted to chutes. At the chutes, cartons are palletised to orders and forwarded to the Dispatch Shipping area. Full-palletised loads are conveyed from the storage area directly to Dispatch via pallet conveyors.