LEL Express to pioneer e-logistics

Vu Duc Thinh, director of LEL Express at the opening ceremony of the automatic sorting centre in Hanoi on June 12

This is the first automatic sorting centre of Lazada in the northern area. How does it measure up against the facility you opened in Ho Chi Minh City in November last year?

The capacity of this second centre is over 10,000 items per hour, and it has an area of 10,000sq.m. Along with the centre in Ho Chi Minh City, the total capacity of LEL Express’ automatic sorting line is tens of thousands items per hour.

Could you share more about the processes and operation of this system? What cutting-edge technology does it sport?

With the capacity of 10,000 items per hour, the automatic sorting hub is expected to match the goods volume of Hanoi in the next two years. This system, which is integrated with bar code reading to identify goods and orders, can run 24 hours per day. It also uses robots to automatically sort by address and deliver to each hub or each third party logistics (3PLs) suppliers. This system reduces mistakes to zero, while speeding up the processing by many times.

How much time does this line save compared to manual work? Could Lazada’s customers receive items earlier?

This is the first time that an automatic sorting line like this is applied in Vietnam. Its conveyor belt speed is 100 metres per minute and saves a great deal of time. Moreover, this system reduces the rate of mistakes to zero and ensures swiftness and accuracy.

Items will travel LEL Express' automatic sorting line at 100 meters per minute

How many workers does the centre employ? What about their performance?

There are more than 100 employees working at this centre, whose tasks are now far different from before. Their performance is very good, and they do not get as tired as before. Robots do the sorting, which is the hardest part of the job. We used to employ double or triple the number of workers during every shopping campaign before. However, with this system, we do not need so many short-term workers for campaigns. It enables LEL Express to increase its performance.

Besides sorting goods for Lazada.vn, does LEL Express intend to expand the centre to serve the entire e-commerce market in the northern and southern area?

This automatic sorting centre meets the volume of e-commerce goods for the next two years, after which LEL Express will develop the second phase of the automatic sorting line. Currently, we place priority on serving Lazada.vn.

If Lazada is a pioneer in the Vietnamese e-commerce industry, LEL Express will be a pioneer in the e-logistics industry. We believe that the e-logistics market will be increasingly active to create more and more development opportunities for local supporting industry firms.

Does Lazada intend to modernise and automate other processing segments in the time to come?

We are always trying to apply new tech in the logistics industry, as well as upgrade and develope other segments in logistics processing. Electric motorbikes are still being deployed as the plan set forth in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and some key locations of LEL Express.

We continue co-operating and researching new technology to improve performance and reduce costs, as well as bring new experiences to customers.