www.dcvelocity.com FEBRUARY 2014 DC VELOCITY 49
BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
CONVEYORS AND SORTATION
materialhandlingupdate
IN WHAT MUST BE CONSIDERED ONE OF THE
most generous gifts ever made, the government of
Denmark in April 2012 handed over the keys to a
multimillion dollar procurement and distribution
center to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s
Fund.
The facility, strategically located near the Port
of Copenhagen, is designed to support the work
UNICEF carries out on behalf of children around
the world. With a staff of 320, the UNICEF Supply
Division undertakes all of UNICEF’s international
procurement and also oversees and guides procure-
ment and logistics in the field. It handles around
$2 billion of supplies each year. Its work includes
shipping emergency relief supplies in response to
typhoons, war, famine, earthquakes, and other nat-
ural and man-made disasters. For instance, after
Typhoon Haiyan battered the Philippines, planes car-
rying items like tents for child-friendly spaces, water
purification and sanitation kits, and medical supplies
were on their way from Copenhagen within 48 hours.
In addition to disaster relief shipments, the facility
procures and delivers materials—such as vaccines,
medicines, nutritional supplements, and educational
supplies—to support UNICEF’s ongoing child survival and development initiatives around the world.
The automated design gives it the flexibility to process both rush orders required by disaster response
and a steady flow of goods shipped to support the
agency’s ongoing global mission.
TURNKEY DESIGN
While UNICEF is based at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, its Supply Division has
been based in Copenhagen since 1962. It is one of
eight U.N. agencies with headquarters or major
operations in the Danish capital. Most of these offices are located on an urban campus known as U.N.
City, where UNICEF Supply previously operated a
manual distribution center. The new facility for the
Making a world of difference
UNICEF’s new global procurement and distribution center in Copenhagen is uniquely
designed to dispatch emergency relief shipments to locations worldwide within 48 hours.
