Faster fulfilment. Smaller footprints. Smarter warehouses.

As supply chains across APAC continue to battle rising operating costs, poor labour productivity, shrinking warehouse availability, and growing customer expectations, businesses are now reaching an inflection point for their warehouse operations.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the June 2026 edition of MHD Supply Chain News Magazine and is republished here with permission.

The traditional warehouse model is no longer keeping pace with either modern fulfilment demands or commercial realities. 

For years, distribution centres have expanded horizontally. More aisles, more travel time, more labour, and more complexity. But as omnichannel commerce volumes increase and cost-to-serve becomes one of the most critical operational metrics for retailers, distributors, manufacturers, and 3PLs alike, simply building larger warehouses is no longer viable.

At CeMAT 2026, Extolla will introduce Attabotics to the APAC market, bringing one of the world’s most innovative automated storage and retrieval systems back into focus for organisations looking to rethink their future fulfilment models.

As Attabotics’ partner and systems integrator across APAC, Extolla will showcase how the technology is helping organisations transform warehouse density, throughput, and operational scalability while supporting faster, smarter, and more cost-efficient fulfilment strategies.

Visitors to Extolla’s stand 126 at CeMAT can discuss how Attabotics is challenging both manual and conventional warehouse automation approaches and why the market is paying close attention to the Attabotics solution.

A new era of warehouse automation

Attabotics is unlike traditional ASRS automation systems.

The technology uses a highly compact, three-dimensional storage structure where robotic shuttles retrieve inventory vertically and horizontally within a dense cube-based system. By eliminating the need for long aisles and excessive travel paths, or digging down columns like other ASRS systems, businesses can dramatically reduce the warehouse footprint while increasing storage density, productivity, and operational efficiency.

Higher SKU counts. Faster fulfilment. Increasing omnichannel volumes. Greater inventory accessibility. Reduced labour dependency. Improved productivity and scalability.

For organisations under pressure to optimise fulfilment performance while minimising costs, the appeal is obvious.

The current supply chain turmoil resulting from global instabilities is having a major impact on supply chain operations across Australia and New Zealand.  Costs are increasing at the same time as economic productivity continues to stagnate – a perfect storm of adverse outcomes.  In parallel, customer service expectations continue to increase resulting in businesses struggling to keep their customer promise.

Attabotics addresses many of these challenges head-on by fundamentally redesigning how inventory is stored, accessed, and fulfilled. It is not simply about automation for automation’s sake. It is about creating a smarter fulfilment operation that is built for long-term agility, growth, and superior productivity.

Why APAC is paying attention

The launch of Attabotics into the APAC market comes at a time when supply chain leaders are actively reassessing how their distribution networks need to evolve over the next decade.

The conversation has shifted well beyond warehouse storage alone. Today, supply chain leaders are looking at the bigger operational picture, asking questions such as,

How do we:

• Reduce cost to serve?
• Fulfil faster without increasing labour costs?
• Optimise warehouse capacity without building larger facilities?
• Support omnichannel growth and changing customer demands?
• Create scalable operations that can evolve with the business?
• Optimise our inventory investment by positioning the right inventory in the right place at the right time?

Automation is becoming a key part of that answer, but successful transformation requires far more than selecting a piece of equipment.

Choosing the right technology is easy. Delivering the right outcome is harder.

“The real challenge is integrating automation, software, inventory strategy and operational design into one connected eco-system. That’s where organisations either unlock transformational value or fall short of expectations.”

– Peter Kendall, CEO, Extolla

That is why businesses are increasingly looking beyond standalone automation vendors and seeking partners that understand the broader supply chain ecosystem.

This is where Extolla’s broader supply chain capabilities come into play.

More than automation

While Attabotics will be a major focus at CeMAT, Extolla’s approach extends well beyond warehouse automation.

The company works with retailers, manufacturers, distributors and 3PL’s across supply chain strategy, warehouse design and redesign, network optimisation, demand planning and inventory strategy, cost-to-serve analysis, transport strategy, and supply chain software selection and implementation.

Because in reality, automation does not operate in isolation.

Modern supply chains rely on connected ecosystems where both operational and inventory strategy, software platforms, warehouse design, and automation technology all work together seamlessly.

Warehouse management systems, order management systems, transport management systems, inventory platforms, and automation controls must be aligned to create real operational value.  Many existing systems were never designed to operate for today’s automation environments, resulting in operations that fail to achieve expected productivity and business case outcomes. 

These challenges are giving rise to a new breed of warehouse execution systems that can bridge the critical resource and asset allocation logic gap inherent within existing core systems and automation end-points. This alignment is becoming critically important as businesses face growing pressure to deliver to automation productivity and financial business cases, while maintaining customer service with finite operating budgets.  

For many organisations, the challenge is no longer deciding whether automation is needed. The challenge is ensuring automation integrates into existing automation to deliver measurable business outcomes. 

Rethinking cost-to-serve

One of the biggest focus areas for supply chain leaders today is understanding cost-to-serve, in detail.

Rising transport costs, labour pressures, inventory carrying costs, and fulfilment complexity are putting pressure on margins and forcing service compromises across almost every sector.

As a result, organisations are increasingly evaluating how warehouse design, automation, customer service, and software can work together to create leaner and more responsive operations.

This is where technologies like Attabotics are generating strong interest.

By reducing travel time and enabling high-density storage, businesses can unlock significant operational efficiencies and faster order fulfilment.

Warehouse design impacts labour models. Inventory flow impacts transport efficiency. Software visibility impacts customer service. Network strategy impacts delivery performance. 

Everything is connected. Nothing is in isolation. This is why it’s so important to assess a supply chain as a whole system, not just individual solutions or siloed elements.

The organisations achieving the greatest customer and operational successes are the ones looking at supply chain transformation holistically rather than as disconnected operational projects.

The future distribution centre is already here

The old world of supply chain has gone – and it’s never coming back.

Distribution centres are no longer simply storage facilities. They are becoming highly intelligent fulfilment hubs designed to support speed, flexibility, and real-time responsiveness. 

As businesses continue navigating economic uncertainty, global supply constraints, changing consumer behaviour, and increasing operational complexity, the need for smarter infrastructure has never been greater.

Attabotics represents a practical example of how warehouse automation is evolving to meet these challenges.

And with Extolla leading its entry into the APAC market, the technology is once again becoming part of a much bigger conversation around the future of supply chain operations.

At CeMAT 2026, Extolla will showcase how organisations can combine intelligent automation, strategic warehouse design, and next-generation software systems to create supply chains that are more resilient, faster, productive, scalable, and built for the future – not the past.

CeMAT visitors can discover Attabotics firsthand at Extolla stand 126.