Hermes has increased its returns capacity by 50% in its national distribution hub with the L.A.C. automated conveyor system.

The L.A.C. system can process more than 7,000 parcels per hour, 76,000 parcels a day, and more than 500,000 parcels a week, while lowering the cost per parcel.

Steve Stanbridge, Engineering Manager at Hermes said: “No one else in the industry is using a system like this to sort their parcels at such an increased throughput and reduced expense.”

The return automation conveyor system has allowed Hermes to automatically sort returns parcel traffic into 28 primary destinations. There are now 8 sorting zones that feed into more than 400 client destinations.

L.A.C. installed a human-machine interface (HMI) into the conveyor system which allows Hermes to enable or disable machine functions, as well as screens for diagnostics and fault finding, which allows on-site teams full analysis of the automation system.