Warehouses - Automation of the Supply Chains

The companion theme of the selection is Industrial Robotics, featuring firms developing  advanced equipment, focused on speed of turn-over and tracking of merchandise

Driven by growth of on-line orders, the warehouses and distribution centers play a key role in the supply chain and “same day” delivery by e-commerce giants require even more storage space

Amazon continues to dominate and relies mainly (but not exclusively) on its own warehouse facilities and robotics expertise, and on the warehouses of its suppliers. By raising customers' service-level expectations with high speed delivery, Amazon has in effect broadened the e-commerce segment of retail sales for all parties

From approx. 9% in 2017, e-commerce' share grew to 11.2% at year end 2019 and - as a result of the pandemic - reached 15% (2020) before stabilizing in the 15% (Q1 2023) to 16%  (Q3-2024) range of U.S. retail sales - according to U.S. Census Bureau data

Warehouse automation specialists such as conveyor belt- and storage/retrieval systems Daifuku or machine vision for inspection and code recognition systems Keyence are key links in warehouse operations, next to industry leader Symbiotic

$3 bn Finnish Hiab (ex-Cargotec) , an on-road load handling solutions specialist, is not included in the selection because no trades have been registered on the over-the-counter platform

$2 bn Japanese Nabtesco, $4 bn German Krones and $3 bn Swiss Kardex belong to  the warehouse automation theme but are not traded in any significant way on the U.S. OTC market - Refer to the companies' home market for performance and volatility trends

Prologis - an industrial REiT and a leader in logistics real estate -  - is the benchmark of the selection, setting real estate warehousing against supply chain technologies