Breda is the new European logistical heart for Abbott

With the opening of a new distribution centre in Breda in Brabant, the medical giant Abbott has - for now - completed its far-reaching plans to optimize its logistical processes. The new European logistical heart of this vast corporation has been beating since 2006, and the Abbott building in Breda is as impressive as the company's medical achievements. In a silo-like environment robotic forklifts do the heavy work, while an ingenious automated system ensures that the precision required is always at hand.

The American company has branches scattered around the globe, and they all work for the common goal of promoting healthcare. Abbott was founded in 1888, has its headquarters in Chicago and develops and manufactures drugs, medical foodstuffs and infant formula, vascular components, products and drugs for diabetics as well as diagnostic instruments. Abbott has branches in over a hundred countries and employs some 68,000 people. The company has been active for over 50 years in the Netherlands with a factory for foodstuff products, two sales and marketing offices and a distribution centre for vascular instruments. It has a workforce of around a thousand people in the Netherlands, with another hundred added when the new distribution centre opened in Breda in 2006.

The Breda branch is the provisional final chapter of a major operation which Abbott launched to provide its distribution system with a new and sturdy base. The plan arose from the desire to further optimize the service provided by the company to its thousands of customers. Breda is now, together with Milan and Madrid, part of the triangle from which Abbott undertakes its European distribution activities. Breda directly serves end-users in Scandinavia, the Benelux region, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as the local distribution centers in many countries across the rest of Europe, the Far East and Latin America. In total, the entire range of Abbott products is distributed to over 160 countries from Breda.

In its search for the perfect location for its new distribution centre, many countries in Europe were checked out. "We actually already had a preference for the Netherlands thank to the excellent experiences we have had here over the years," says Mike Douma, general manager of Abbott in Breda. "Our choice of Brabant and Breda arose out of a number of considerations. That naturally included its perfect strategic location in the vicinity of the international ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp and the airports of Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne and Dusseldorf. The total infrastructure is also great. Furthermore, we have access to well-trained staff here, many of whom are multilingual so English is never a problem. The Netherlands is also a country where people from different cultural backgrounds can work well together. There is a stable political and financial climate and the tax regime and customs facilities are to our advantage. And, of course, bodies like the municipality and the Brabant Development Agency were fantastic in their cooperation."

Mike Douma now oversees about 150 employees in Breda. "I make them aware that they are an important link in the process that aids people in finding a healthy future. It's not for nothing that ‘A promise to the future' is our mission."

On the subject of the future, the impressive Abbot building in Breda is pure space age. The distribution centre has been set up like a silo, where robotic forklifts stack in the region of 30,000 pallets on 30-meter high scaffolding. "Our logistics process is almost fully automated," Douma explains. "That is how we can guarantee that our service is of a constantly high quality." Aside from storage and distribution, another one of Abbott's Breda activities covers value added logistics, such as finishing, labeling and postponement. It is expected that these activities will be further expanded in the near future.