The pain of growth awaits e-commerce – Sydsvenskan

At the Apotea warehouse in Morgongåva, operations are primarily 24 hours a day. New shipments must be packaged and shipped at all times.Image: Fredrik Sandberg / TT

On one of the walls of the Adlibris warehouse there is a screen with a digital counter. It shows the number of packages completed for delivery and now, during the corona pandemic, it ticks faster than seconds on a watch. At 9 in the morning it already has five digits.

– A normal daily average is about 25,000 articles, but at the moment it is clearly higher. We have two shifts that run from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., says Daniel Hallgren, acting logistics manager.

During the year, he gained up to 100 new co-workers when the corona pandemic caused the business to expand dramatically. Employees walk between shelves and pallets to collect detective stories, cookbooks and children’s and young people’s literature, and in another part of the warehouse – board games and puzzles that were in high demand during the pandemic.

– We have been able to follow in real time the hardness of the stops in the different Nordic countries. Compared to 2019, we are 35-40 percent well up to date on the consumer side, so it’s a real boost upward, says CEO Jonas Karlén.

This after the company had a loss of 217 million SEK in 2019 and the then CEO had to leave the year before, even then after a weak financial state.

This also did not include Black Friday sales and holiday shopping. While forecasts point to a decline in holiday shopping, it is unlikely to primarily affect e-commerce.

– We have a number of scenarios, but of course we believe in a substantial increase before Christmas shopping, in part because we are increasingly moving towards e-commerce even without the crown. With further tightening of restrictions, we believe in more sales compared to our September forecast.

TT: How worried are you that deliveries won’t work out?

– For our part, that part of the chain has worked well. We have added new delivery options and we can choose another if something doesn’t work. Then I should worry about everything, what about the competition, with the physical book? It is important to pay attention to everything. We must not be satiated.

A couple of hundred meters away is Heby Township’s other large workplace, the Apotea headquarters. Together, the two form something of Sweden’s e-commerce hub in the Morgongåva business park on the land that was once a steel mill and was later acquired by contractor and financier Anders Wall.

There is also a connection between companies. The current CEO of Apotea, Pär Svärdson, co-founded Adlibris before it was sold to Bonniers.

When you now walk into the Apotea facility, it is approximately 40,000 square meters and full of stacked goods.

– We employed 200 people this spring and now we are about 900 in total. It can be said that when Anders Tegnell comes out to a press conference and announces new restrictions, we notice it almost immediately when it comes to receiving orders, he says.

Every day, 250 pallets enter the facility. At the other extreme, up to 50,000 packages are sent to customers.

– Since March, it has been an eternal struggle. We have grown about 50 percent and then we had a 20 percent growth forecast.

Even if part of the packaging is done with the help of robots, most of the work is done manually.

Therefore, employees walk around it with carriages connected to a tablet. A picture of what product appears on the plate: shampoo, throat lozenges, or deodorant to pick up. Pharmacists are responsible for prescription drugs.

– In many places there are requirements to speak perfect Swedish. Here you can get a job and then improve your Swedish when you choose an image on the tablet, he says.

At the same time, there has been a dramatic change during the pandemic.

– We went from placing an ad and getting 40 responses to getting 5,000 responses. It is also a completely different group of applicants, people who have had a long history in completely different sectors.

Louise Tengwall is a typical example. As a flight attendant at SAS, he made his last flight in April.

– I became unemployed this summer, never worked in warehouses before, but wanted a full time job. At first, it was like dreaming at night about work and walking down the aisles, he says.

While Adlibris is now negotiating with the union about a possible night shift, the growing demand has meant it has already made its way into Apotea.

– We will live with the crown, there are no signs that indicate a decline right now, quite the opposite. We will have to make a change already this spring, says Pär Svärdson, referring to the premises.

Because although it seems gigantic, it is growing and there is a plant for another 40,000 square meters.

– A couple of years in the future, we could be 500 more people. For tiny Morgongåva with 1,400 residents, it’s a substantial increase, he says.