The Whole-Industry Ambitions of a “Chain Leader” Enterprise
Founded in 2000, Beipiao Hongfa Food Co., Ltd. integrates breeder chicken farming, chick hatching, base rearing, broiler processing and the production of cooked and prepared products, and is a national-level key leading enterprise in agricultural industrialization as well as one of China's top ten companies in the white-feather broiler industry.
In recent years, Hongfa has kept ramping up its digitalization drive, investing several hundred million yuan in total, bringing in China's first fully automated production line for the entire white-feather broiler processing flow, and deploying core management systems including ERP, SAP and an intelligent warehousing system—enabling data collection, processing and analysis across the whole industrial chain and a marked rise in its digital-intelligent operations. Since the digital platform went live, electricity use per chicken has dropped 25% and water consumption has fallen 30%, cutting costs and raising efficiency while marking a key step toward green production.
In 2023, a prepared-dish processing project with an annual capacity of 50,000 tonnes went into production, mainly serving chain restaurant brands such as Yoshinoya and Qipinda, marking Hongfa's strategic upgrade from primary processing to deep and fine processing.
One Freezer Warehouse, Connecting the Whole Process
With the prepared-dish project in place, Hongfa faced a hard question: how to keep more than 1,500 pallets of chicken products flowing efficiently every day and traced precisely, while holding the bottom line on food safety?
The answer: a -20 °C automated high-bay freezer warehouse. It delivers full-process digital traceability for frozen chicken and cooked and prepared products, and together with strict temperature-zone management and batch control, it makes every ingredient accountable.
Inside this 4,000 m² freezer warehouse, 10 ATOMIX PS1500AC cold-store pallet shuttles and 4 lifts were deployed. The PS1500AC is purpose-built for cold-chain scenarios and has been validated in extreme cold, running stably at -25 °C. The “brain” that dispatches them is the ATOMIX Matrix8 software platform—its AI algorithms decide storage slot allocation and fleet path planning in real time, achieving efficient equipment coordination and precise operations.
Solution:
- ATOMIX pallet shuttles: 10 units
- ATOMIX lifts: 4 units
- ATOMIX Matrix8 intelligent software: 1 set
Core equipment:
Cold-store pallet shuttle Megbot-PS1500AC
- Industrial three-proof design: resistance to condensation, fog and low-temperature failure
- Standard wide-temperature electronic components, low-temperature lubricating oil and polyurethane travel wheels ensure continuous, reliable operation at -25 °C
- Standard low-temperature lithium carbonate batteries guarantee stable charging and discharging in low-temperature environments
Cold-Chain Force: a “Time Machine” from Farm to Table
Solution value:
Storage locations: 6,450
Throughput: 120 pallets per hour, 1,500 pallets per day
Storage capacity: up 60%
Behind these figures lies the fullest release of the freezer warehouse's spatial value, and a qualitative change in Hongfa's supply chain efficiency.
The value of this freezer warehouse goes far beyond storage.
First, the power to lock in freshness. In the -20 °C full cold-chain environment, whether frozen chicken or cooked and prepared foods, flavor and nutrition are precisely locked in.
Second, the power of traceability. With shelf-life and batch management through the Matrix8 software, every piece of chicken can be traced back to its farm and cutting date, and food safety becomes every row of data in the system.
Third, the power of coordination. The freezer warehouse connects seamlessly with the upstream automated cutting lines and the prepared-dish workshop, and the Matrix8 system exchanges data with ERP and WMS in real time, letting “production—warehousing—distribution” run in one continuous flow.
From Beipiao to the Whole Country: a Chicken's “Freshness-Locking Journey”
Today, Hongfa's products cover the whole country and are exported overseas, and the company has established long-term cooperation with leading food enterprises such as COFCO, Shuanghui and Anjoy.
With its extreme freshness locking and precise management, this -20 °C smart freezer warehouse has become the toughest “cold-chain force” on this journey of thousands of miles from hatching egg to fried chicken.
From a single egg to a piece of fried chicken, this -20 °C smart freezer warehouse, jointly built by Beipiao Hongfa and ATOMIX, has locked in freshness and locked in quality.
