Collo-X is expanding to the UK
Collo-X is active in the United Kingdom. British operations in e-commerce and fulfilment, 3PL, healthcare and pharmacy, retail and wholesale can come to us with their sorting challenge, with the MicroSorter leading the way.
For Collo-X, the logistics arm of FarmaSort, this is the next step after the Benelux and mainland Europe. Not a leap into the unknown, but the formalisation of something that was already happening.
Why the UK, and why now
Three things came together.
The demand came from the market itself. British companies have been finding us on their own, through trade show contacts and through the website. The questions coming in sound familiar: picking is under control, but the sorting step afterwards is manual and grinds to a halt during peaks.
It is a deliberate growth step. The UK is one of Europe's most mature e-commerce markets: high order density, substantial return flows and a strong 3PL sector. Exactly the profile where fine sorting pays off.
There is now a dedicated point of contact. Our colleague Jaap Vos covers the British market. That gives the UK a direct line into Collo-X, rather than an address on the mainland.
What makes UK operations different
The challenges are recognisable, but the balance is different.
Space is scarce and expensive, especially around the major distribution corridors. A sorting solution that swallows half a warehouse gets ruled out quickly. The MicroSorter is designed around a compact footprint, so automation fits inside the building you already have.
Labour is the second factor. Rising wage costs and a tight warehousing labour market make manual sorting more expensive every year. And that work peaks exactly when staff is hardest to find: Black Friday, the Christmas period and the January returns wave.
Then there is the nature of the goods flow. Small products, many SKUs, small order lines. Classic large sorting systems were never built for that. Fine sorting was.
Where we are active in the UK
- E-commerce and fulfilment. Batch pick, then sort to order, without the sorting step becoming the brake.
- 3PL providers. Multiple clients, fluctuating volumes, contracts that come and go. Scaling modularly matters more here than maximum capacity on day one.
- Healthcare and pharmacy. Coming from FarmaSort, we know medication flows, blister packaging and traceability requirements from the inside.
- Retail and wholesale. Fine sorting per store, per route or per order, as the link between warehouse and shop floor.
What we bring
The MicroSorter sorts up to 1500 products per hour to 40+ order destinations, with 99.9% accuracy and a footprint that fits where other systems do not. Alongside it we deliver EasyFulfill for the complete sorting process and the Pick & Place robot for automated picking and placing.
More important than the individual specifications is the approach: we start with the process, not with the machine. Which step is stuck, what does that step really cost today, and which solution pays for itself within an acceptable period. Sometimes that is a full line, sometimes a single module in the right place.
The first step
If you run a UK operation where sorting is the bottleneck, we are happy to work through the numbers with you: your volumes, your peaks, your available space.
Book a consultation with Jaap, or start with the MicroSorter product page.