System Report: Amer Sports gears up on advanced automation

The way the intralogistics automation leaders at Amer Sports see it, they serve two customers. One, the iconic brands within the group; and two, the online consumers and retailers who expect rapid, accurate fulfillment, along with well-packaged, damage-free orders on a daily basis. The company is meeting those needs today for its Canadian markets with advanced warehouse automation at a new facility near Toronto and plans to roll out similar automated fulfillment centers in other regions, says Björn Ostertag, Amer Sports’ director of logistics projects. The Toronto site, which went live in December 2024, sets the blueprint for how Amer Sports will fill orders faster and more effectively, not just direct-to-consumer e-commerce orders, but also business-to-business (B2B) orders from retailers. Ostertag explains the automation is designed to be modular, to readily scale up to support the future needs of the rapidly growing group and its brands. “It was important for us to plan over a long-term horizon and take a global view, not only for the right location and right size for this facility, but also the right technology in order to be able to standardize intra-logistic setups in future, thus being faster, if change is needed,” Ostertag says. “Scalability was important to us, to grow capacity as we grow, without having to over-invest from the start.” Amer Sports’ high-level objectives for the site in Belleville, Ontario, included greater storage density, faster order processing, cost savings, enhanced customer satisfaction, and the modularity to support business growth in a phased manner. The facility replaced a nearby, largely manual DC. The new site is significantly faster at order cycle times, and order picking and packing labor efficiency. To support B2B orders, the new warehouse also has case-picking workflows from rack, and some palletizing. To design and integrate the advanced automation systems at Belleville, Amer Sports collaborated with a systems integrator (Bastian Solutions). These systems include a modular goods-to-person (GTP) picking solution (Exotec), with completed order totes that flow from the automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) to a right-sized packaging system (CMC Packaging Automation). Conveyor and warehouse control solutions from Bastian connect everything, creating an automated and rapid material flow that greatly reduces warehouse travel to pick faces and cuts down on manual pack-out needs. As Ostertag puts it, this blend of technologies, which the company began assessing in 2021, is essential to keeping up with today’s omnichannel requirements, along with the rapid growth curve the company and its brands have been on for years now. “To achieve quick processing time and efficiency to getting orders to customers, we needed a different speed level and different technology than in the past,” says Ostertag. “The performance of the system has been great, exceeding what was promised before go-live.” Omnichannel shifts Amer Sports might not be a household name, but its premium sports and outdoor brands are well known to consumers who are passionate about their sports. These brands include Arc’teryx, Salomon, Wilson, Atomic and Peak Performance. The growth of the group, fueled by product innovations and backed up by shared logistics, has been strong. The public company’s total sales grew by 18% over 2024, and as of late 2025, its guidance predicted 2025 revenue growth to be in the 23% to 24% range. This level of growth, combined with e-commerce pressures, were two key drivers for the blend of automation selected for Belleville. So was the changing nature of retail fulfillment, says Ostertag, where stores don’t always order in pallet or full case quantities, and often prefer to be topped off in more of a just-in-time manner after placing larger orders to begin a season for a category like hiking or skiing. “It’s an omnichannel warehouse, so the technology for it needs to reflect how B2B has evolved,” says Ostertag. “We see a different behavior with B2B orders today compared with say, 10 years ago. In the past, B2B orders would mainly be full-carton picks, and now, B2B customers don’t always order that way. The size per order in terms of units per order have trended toward being smaller and smaller.” That boils down to more each picking, which the Exotec Skypod system excels at, since its goods-to-person design keeps pickers at ergonomic workstations, rather than walking or driving up and down warehouse aisles. Each workstation can process at least 168 order lines per hour, with higher max rates possible. The speed of the system not only helps meet consumer delivery expectations, it holds strategic benefits for Amer Sports’ retail partners in that they can dedicate more store space to display and sales, adds Bradley Dow, director of distribution and IT operations at Amer Sports, who heads up operations and systems at Belleville. “The retailers want to optimize their floor space for merchandising, with less space devoted to backroom stock storage,” says Dow. “Because of this, they look to suppliers that are nimble and fast to support their day-to-day sales with a ‘never out’ attitude.” System highlights The Skypod system currently holds 60,000 bins as storage locations. Additionally, approximately three dozen of Exotec’s mobile robots are in use as are half a dozen pick stations plus a few more for decanting and replenishment. While the grid infrastructure was built for far more than 100,000 bins, robots can be added quickly, and sufficient space is available for twice as many pick stations, in line with Amer Sports’ scalability strategy. This modularity is central to scaling for future growth, adds Ostertag, without initially outlaying extra capital on underutilized automation. The overall solution includes supporting conveyor and sortation to move picked orders out of the AS/RS in orange order totes, to bring them to the automated packaging system from CMC, as well as to cycle back empty totes. The conveyor system is controlled by warehouse control system (WCS) software from Bastian, while Exotec’s software drives the goods-to-person picking and its workstation directives, manages the robot fleet and optimizes storage. The technologies function as a cohesive system, with master data in an SAP warehouse management system (WMS). To fill B2B orders that involve a combination of cases or oversized items picked from the racks, with eaches picked though the Skypod system, the conveyor can divert completed items to an order consolidation area. Other totes coming from the Exotec system are transported to the automated packaging system. “It is an integrated, end-to-end approach,” says Ostertag. “Efficient picking is one thing, but the other objective was efficient packaging that is right-sized so we aren’t shipping air.” Dow notes that the systems also support a better unboxing experience for customers. For example, before induction into the CMC system, multi-item orders are banded together by an automatic banding machine, so that one tidy, right-sized package (and less corrugate) heads out to the customer. Single line-item orders are inducted straight into the same machine, which automatically captures dimensional data and forms the right-sized packaging around the item. The technology saves costs on transportation, protects the goods, and simplifies and improves unboxing and recycling for customers. “There is the expectation that when you receive orders for our brands, that you’ll have a great unboxing experience,” Dow says. “So, packaging is something we are constantly training our team on here. We make a point of helping them understand the level of passion our customers have for our brands. We want them to have a big smile on their face when they open a carton or bag from us.” The automation in the new facility does change the nature of work needed compared with the legacy operation. The new site can handle more fulfillment volume with fewer manual pickers and packers versus the legacy DC, but because the company has been on a rapid growth curve, it hasn’t led to a downsizing of the workforce. What’s more, the new site is a handful of kilometers away from the legacy site, so many existing employees came over to the new fulfillment center. Associate roles and workflows have evolved with the new site. The automation isn’t lights out—it needs operators at the workstation, and there are quality control and decanting processes upstream from the AS/RS in addition to operators for the automated packaging system. To address these realities, change management for the front-line associates was an important part of the deployment plan. “The type of work needed at the new facility is different—there is more IT thinking needed and more quality control checks,” says Ostertag. “Of course, there are efficiency gains with automation, but with the growth we’ve experienced, we have sufficient workload for our employees—it’s just that the work is done differently now.” The new site has a 39-foot clear height, which when combined with the AS/RS, improves storage density compared with the legacy site, which had a 22-foot clear height with racks and aisles for manual access. The previous DC had only light automation, with some minimal conveyor for moving goods in and out of manual packing. Dow estimates the productivity level in new DC is three to four times higher than the legacy site. What’s more, the manual approach wasn’t long-term sustainable, given Amer Sports’ growth curve. “There is limit on how many pieces of materials handling equipment and how many people you can fit into a building and operate in effectively to meet higher volume, before you hit that tipping point where you just need to do it differently,” says Dow. Standardizing automated FCs The DC in Belleville serves Amer Sports’ Canadian markets and channels, with exception of fulfillment into the United States for one of the smaller brands. With its central location in the Toronto metro area, it has established transportation routes to bring in goods from either coast. What’s more, more than 7 million people live in the Toronto metro alone, and 27 million people live within a five-hour ground shipping radius of the DC. This enables the Belleville site to service rapid deliveries to a large population base. Additionally, the automation at Belleville will serve as a blueprint for similar automated facilities in the United States and Europe. In the United States, they have plans to develop an existing warehouse close to Salt Lake City, Utah, with a similar automation setup. The company also is exploring other automated DC opportunities in the United States and Europe. In Amer Sports’ view, these advanced fulfillment centers will enable high service levels, lower fulfillment costs and importantly, it will allow the company to scale up capacity to meet continued growth in a modular fashion. Overall, says Ostertag, it’s a more standardized approach that differs from past eras in apparel and retail, when DCs could be custom-built to suit traditional B2B fulfillment needs that were heavy on case picking and pallet building workflows. Having proven warehouse automation systems that support today’s omnichannel order patterns as well as direct-to-consumer growth, and are easier to hook into Amer Sports’ SAP backbone, is all part of the thinking that went into the Belleville project, he adds. “In the past, when Amer Sports was smaller, we chose the best systems and infrastructure for each site individually, but that adds complexity by having different technologies to integrate,” Ostertag says. “We now believe that standardization is important to achieve the speed and efficiencies we need, while helping us transform from a B2B-oriented company in the setup of our fulfillment network, to also be a more of a B2C-proficient company.” Inside Amer Sports: Change management for automation Robotic goods-to-person picking and automated packaging are both delivering on speed and efficiencies for Amer Sports, but the automation success also draws on the human element. In establishing a next-generation omnichannel warehouse near Toronto to serve the Canadian market, Amer Sports leaned heavy into advanced automation. The systems include a mobile-robot enabled automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS), an automated packaging system that produces right-sized cartons, and conveyor and sortation systems to link the systems and automate all the tote transport. “We went from essentially zero miles per hour to 100 miles per hour in terms of leveraging automation from our old building to the new facility,” says Bradley Dow, director of distribution and IT operations for Amer Sports Canadian fulfillment operations. “When we considered the systems going into this operation, and looked at how we were going to be successful here, a key thing for us was making sure that we communicated really well with our team members on what to expect and had a change management plan in place.” Long-term strategy and geography helped this change management. The new site is close to the legacy site, so when the systems were going through final testing, it was easy to bring associates over and show them first-hand how the new automation worked. Due to Amer Sports’ rapid growth, propelled by the market efforts and quality of its brands (including Arc’teryx, Salomon, Wilson, Peak Performance and Atomic), the company had decided well in advance it needed to put in place more advanced fulfillment centers to serve key markets. This provided time to devise a change management plan, centered on helping associates understand how the systems work, and the new roles that would be available. The new site also continues to execute more traditional business-to-business (B2B) fulfillment, with case picking and palletizing to replenish stores with larger orders or items. A small zone of the new warehouse is dedicated to manually inflating basketballs, soccer balls and other balls, a process that is not easily automated. Lift truck operators did need training to gain proficiency with the higher rack heights in the new warehouse, but much of the change management involved understanding how the new automation works, and where the systems rely on human interaction, such as being an operator at a goods-to-person workstation, or inducting orders into the automated packaging system, or other tasks like quality control and decanting near receiving. “You really have to take the time to reduce those barriers or fears that some people will have with working alongside the automation, but those fears are a real thing,” says Dow. “Once they gain a comfort level with what is involved, those fears of the unknown subside for most people. And by presenting it that way, we had some of our more senior people ask to engage with the new automation. Overall, the staff adopted and embraced the change involved, and some of them have become mentors to others in learning how to work with the automation.” Amer Sports also upscaled the training of its maintenance staff with knowledge to help support the new automation system. The systems integrator for the site, Bastian Solutions, keeps an expert on site for the AS/RS and conveyance, but Amer Sports’ staff also are trained on lower-level support processes and actions. Amer Sports also sent some technicians to a CMC Packaging Automation training center in Atlanta, to gain enough expertise to assist in maintaining the automated packaging system. To help grow its pool of new technicians capable of supporting advanced warehouse automation, Amer Sports has been collaborating with Loyalist College, which has its main campus right in Belleville, says Dow. The college offers curriculum that includes mechatronics and industrial controls, producing graduates with strong backgrounds to become warehouse automation and robotics maintenance technicians. While Amer Sports also relies on its integrator and automation OEMs for support of the new systems, Dow says the company wants to be proactive in building in-house skills. For the associates on the floor, the change management was followed up by cross training of the core team of associates, so they could be adept at working in the different automated zones, which now is helping the operation flex its labor on a shift-by-shift basis. “Everybody in our building is cross trained,” says Dow. “Anything to do with inbound receiving steps, outbound, cycle counting, replenishment, order consolidation—the core team is fully cross trained. That allows us to deploy people into different zones almost hourly. So, we are monitoring the activities that are going on and then deciding how to deploy people.” Company: Amer Sports Location: Belleville, Ontario, Canada Products handled: Sports apparel, shoes and equipment. Square footage: 206,000 square feet, with a 39-foot clear height. Shifts: Two shifts per day, Monday to Friday Employees: Core team is 70 people, but the workforce flexes to about 100 for peak season Channels: The Belleville facility is omnichannel, able to pull and ship cases or pallets to stores, or rapidly fulfill direct to consumer orders or smaller B2B replenishments. System suppliers Systems integration & conveyor design: Bastian Solutions Warehouse control system: Bastian Solutions Goods-to-person robotic picking: Exotec Automated packaging system: CMC Packaging Automation Automatic banding machinery: Bandall Electric lift trucks: Jungheinrich WMS: SAP