BCS to build parcel sorting system in Sydney

Marc Michel.

A New Zealand technology company has scored its biggest logistics contract to build a parcel sorting system for a 53,000sq metre freight facility in Sydney.

Logistics giant Toll Group is building an express parcel sorting centre in west Sydney, which will be the largest facility of its kind in Australasia.

Auckland-based BCS Group - which also provides baggage handling systems for airports - is to build the sorting system for the $170 million facility.

The deal was signed just before Christmas, according to BCS' general manager of services and solutions and group marketing Marc Michel.

BCS will provide both software and hardware to the project, which will enable parcels to be sorted and processed around four times faster than existing systems. The facility, with 600 conveyors, will sort more than 32,000 parcels an hour at peak times.

"You get a whole lot of very large trucks on one side of the building and you get a whole lot of courier vans on the other side and the system in between them is the smarts which processes and automatically sorts all of that freight at high speed," Michel said.

The most important part of the system comes from BCS' Freightflow software, which controls the sorting process, he said.

The Toll contract was the largest logistics-industry deal BCS had secured to date and was likely to be as big as its largest airport project.

While BCS' core business was traditionally with airports and airlines, the company is landing more work in the logistics industry.

BCS, which employs more than 300 staff worldwide, recorded revenue of $83.5 million in the 2013 financial year, according to the TIN100 report.

This was up $21.9 million, or 35.5 per cent, from 2012.