For one moment, the morning sun glinting between threatening storm clouds above the Øresund Strait makes the huge gray-and-white cuboid glow. The building is both impressive and plain. Around 20,000 tonnes of relief supplies per year are transported out Unicef’s global hub in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn: medicines, blankets, tents, buckets, filters as well as other equipment to treat water, and much more besides. A total of over 850 different goods and product sets, called kits, whose purpose is to help children, and families are stored in the warehouse.

In its state-of-the-art warehouse in the Danish capital, the United Nations International Children’s Fund handles “only” five percent of the total supplies procured by the organization. “The majority of Unicef’s supplies, such as vaccine, therapeutic food, and mosquito nets, go directly from the manufacturer to the consignees – they do not transit through Copenhagen.” explains Elena Trajkovska, Unicef’s Chief of International Transport. “But our warehouse in Copenhagen is vitally important for supplies in emergency situations, especially kit-packing.”

Airfreight is considered as the first choice to deliver emergency shipments. Air shipments represent close to 70 percent of the total number of shipments in a year. Efficient warehousing logistics also plays a major part in successful relief operations. The hub in Copenhagen is by and large automated and perfectly networked with the inventory control and tracking systems.

At any given time, the computerized system knows what items are being ordered and where they are in the process getting ready for shipment. A high-bay warehouse with eight autonomous fork-lifts bring supplies to and from 36,000 pallet spaces as they come in, and as they are called out for packing. In addition, there are two long and five short packing lines, two pallet-handling robots, one electric in floor track and an assembly line for the few tasks that need to be carried out by hand.

Raju Shrestha, Chief of the Logistics Center, is in charge of 40 warehouse logisticans and also manages the Unicef hubs in Dubai, Panama and Shanghai, knows from his own experience how modern warehousing technology saves lives. The engineer from Nepal set up a water supply system in remote villages at the beginning of his work for Unicef. “We used to be able to pack only 500 Family Water Kits per shift. Since our hub in Copenhagen became fully operational in February last year, we manage 850 per shift.”

Thanks to automation, the kits containing health supplies such as medicines and hospital equipment and family water kits containing water purification tablets, buckets, jerrycans and soap can now be put together in Copenhagen faster than before. Crucial in this context: the 3,000 trays for small parts, which are automatically filled with the various relief supplies on winding conveyor belts and assembled into packages at the end.

One click on the computer and processes such as storage, packaging and retrieval are reliably and swiftly implemented. The fact that 362,000 kits were forwarded from Copenhagen last year is attributable to the perfect dovetailing of all processes. The most frequently requested package in emergency situations was the Interagency Emergency Health Kit, a standardized combination of different medical supplies developed by various relief organizations.