The devices can move up to 600 kilos of goods and speed up delivery separation by 20%; reduces labor needs, but the company says it will hire 11,000 people in the country by the end of 2024, bringing its workforce to 32,000
With announced investments of R$23 billion, Mercado Livre prioritizes the areas of logistics, fintech, advertising market and measures that help improve the company’s productivity. To this end, it has invested in the use of robots in its operation at the SP04 distribution center, in Cajamar, which processes around 500,000 orders per day, or 347 orders per minute.
According to the president of the Brazilian company, Fernando Yunes, the company already has 100 robots, which have been in the testing phase for three months, and the number will be increased to 334 by the end of the year. The equipment reduces the separation time of goods purchased by customers via the Internet by 20%, generating productivity gains and speeding up deliveries to consumers.
Produced by the Chinese company Quicktron, the devices are similar to a robot vacuum cleaner painted yellow and can lift up to 600 kilos. The battery life is eight hours and they return to the base to be recharged before starting a new working day. The 100 robots already in operation today can lift and move 2,500 shelves per day.
Robots speed up a currently manual process of moving items around a company’s distribution center. An employee must go with a trolley to the shelves where the products are stored randomly and identified by QR code. When necessary, the wheeled shelves were moved from one side of the center to the other by an employee. The idea now is that the shelves are brought by robots to an employee who supplies them with the products. They then go to the packing unit and board the trucks for delivery.
“The consumer gets faster deliveries and, by our estimates, employees will have a 70% reduction in the steps required to walk distances in the distribution center during a workday,” says Yunes.
In Cajamar, after the expansion of the units used, robots will be responsible for up to 22% of order picking. Next year, the plan is to expand this initiative to more distribution centers and other countries, enabling not only a gain in productivity, but also space.
Since the shelves do not have to be arranged so that employees can pass through, the distance between the shelves is now reduced to just 15 cm, which leads to a 10% to 15% increase in goods storage capacity per meter square .
Adopting robots reduces the need for labor for order picking, but Mercado Livre’s plan is to continue hiring in Brazil. The company had promised 6,500 hires, but will hire 11,000 people at the end of the year, 70% more than initially expected, according to Yunes. Therefore, the number of employees is expected to increase from 22 thousand to 33 thousand people by the end of 2024.
“In that picking function, we now have the shelves reaching the people. But we are increasing the number of hires by expanding the number of distribution centers and increasing the order processing volume per center. Today, we do not have the maximum capacity in i distribution centers and we need more people as orders increase,” he says.
Yunes also announced two new distribution centers not initially planned for this year. They will be in Porto Alegre (RS) and Brasilia and are part of Mercado Livre’s increased investment in the country. Mercado Livre’s promise is R$23 billion of investments in 2024, 20% more than in 2023. However, Yunes says the figure. it needs to be taller, but he didn’t say how much. “The only thing that can be said is that next year the investments will be even greater,” he says.
According to data from the online monitoring company Conversion, Mercado Livre is the leader in access to e-commerce sites in Brazil, followed by the Asian Shopee and the American Amazon. OLX and Magazine Luiza are the only Brazilians to be included in the list of the five digital stores most visited by consumers in the country.
Regarding competition with new platforms entering the country, Mercado Livre founder and CEO of the company, Marcos Galperín, says that the company is accustomed to the competitive environment. “We always get a lot of questions about the contestants, just the name changes,” he said. For him, the next ten years will see further growth in e-commerce and investments in the Mercado Livre.
Taxation of international purchases
Regarding the fight over the taxation of international purchases up to $50, Galperín said the company’s operations in Brazil must adapt to tax conditions. “We have been present in eight Latin American countries for 25 years. We adapt to the milestones that each country chooses,” he said.
He says he believes import taxation benefits domestic sellers. Therefore, if the import tax for products purchased abroad via the Internet is approved, these sellers will have priority on the platform. “Without import taxes, we will have more Chinese sellers,” he says. Yunes says the company supports tax equality between products imported to individuals from e-commerce platforms and domestic retailers.
For him, the proposal added to the Mover project will have to be approved by the Senate. Otherwise the company will have to increase its import operations, which it doesn’t focus on as much today. “If there is no equality, Meli (Free market) it would start the process of importing products,” he said. However, the executive points out that the impact of a tax on low-value international purchases would be small for the company because there are currently few of them on the platform.
Source: Terra
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
