warehouse

If Mercadona wants to continue growing, it needs to dominate the online channel. Now you have your first semi-automated warehouse

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Not everything is white label and pre-cooked food in Mercadona’s strategy. Although the Valencian company is transforming part of its stores in ‘merchants’spaces where customers can eat dishes already cooked in the supermarket, their commercial commitment also involves the opposite pole: attracting those families who choose to stay at home and make their purchases remotely. Only in 2025 the online channel reported 1.1 billion to the company, which explains why it has just released a new mega warehouse in Madrid with which he wants to revolutionize his distance sales. In fact, he calls it a “Semi-Automated Hive.” What has happened? What Mercadona just opened a warehouse in the La Atalayuela industrial estate, in Villa de Vallecas (Madrid), which aspires to mark a before and after in its online sales channel. The reason: although the Valencian chain already has six other similar warehouses, spread across Valencia, Barcelona, ​​Alicante, Seville and the Community of Madrid itself, where it manages another two in Getafe and Boadilla del Monte, none of them is comparable to the one in Vallecas. Why is it different? The other six “hives” (the name with which Mercadona refers to this type of warehouse) work with operators and machinery, but the one it has activated in La Atalayuela is the first semi-automated one in its network. That is, the new warehouse incorporates 70 robots that will be responsible for directly managing 2,700 non-perishable goods, which will in turn simplify the tasks that depend on the operators. “The worker no longer walks through aisles to locate the products, but rather the product arrives at the order preparation station,” clarify. Do we know anything else? Yes. The new warehouse does not only stand out for its operation, it also stands out for its size. Round the 32,000 square meterswhich makes it the largest “Hive” in the network managed by Mercadona. To build it, the company has invested 54 million euros and formed a staff of 700 people. Its objective is to be able to attend up to 5,000 orders per day, which would raise Mercadona’s total capacity in the Community of Madrid to 8,000 if the warehouses that already operate in Getafe and Boadilla del Monte are taken into account. The firm aims to cover 95% of the locations in the region this year. Why is it important? Because, beyond what it may mean for the service it provides in Madrid, the new warehouse also tells us about Mercadona’s strategy. The chain has been betting on its white label and the section ‘Ready to eat’which basically offers customers an assortment of already cooked dishes. The bet is going reasonably well: the latest data that has emerged shows that in 2025 the company will invoice in Spain 700 million of euros through this last route, a figure that rises to 3,000 million if the entire business of pre-cooked foods in the national and Portuguese markets is included. Although the online channel includes a section of “prepared dishes”the ‘Ready to eat’ section basically relies on face-to-face sales in stores. In fact, in some stores Mercadona even offers spaces with tables and chairs where customers can eat, just as if they were in a bar. The new Colmena aims at a different business niche: that of distance sales. And how are you doing in that business? In your latest annual report Mercadona revealed that in 2025 the “reinforcement” of its online purchasing model allowed it to increase turnover through that channel by 26%, surpassing the barrier of 1,000 million euros for the first time. To be more precise, the Valencian company was talking about a cash flow of 1,061 million euros thanks to both the activity of its “Hives” and the 218 physical stores that offer the service. In addition to opening warehouses, Mercadona has made two major improvements in this channel in recent years: it has enabled its website to make it accessible to customers with vision problems and it has incorporated Bizum as a payment method. Images | Mercadona In Xataka | In Spain, eating has become a procedure that must be quick and easy. And that is making gold for the supermarkets that prepare dishes

The Netherlands has become the warehouse of European logistics. Amancio Ortega has proposed to get the keys

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There are countries that have become gold mines for large investors. The Netherlands is one of them and Amancio Ortega he knows it very wellso he doesn’t seem willing to let someone else eat his piece of cake. The founder of Inditex has just closed a new purchase in the Netherlands: a huge logistics center near the border with Germany for 132 million euros. In less than three years, Pontegadea has invested almost 390 million euros in logistics infrastructure in that country. The reason: controlling Holland is control European logistics. A logistics center in the heart of Europe. As and as I advanced the dutch environment PropertynNLPontegadea has purchased a logistics center in Sevenum, a city in the southeast of the Netherlands next to the border with Germany. That location is key for the interest of the Ortega real estate agencysince it makes it a strategic point for moving merchandise between northern Europe and the German market, the largest on the continent. The logistics facility has an area of ​​about 94,000 m2 in total, of which 85,000 m2 correspond to industrial space and another 8,500 m2 are used for offices. Calvin Klein pays the rent. As is now common, one of the variables that distinguish Pontegadea’s investments is that its properties already have solvent tenants tied to long-term rental contracts. This has historically been the case with all real estate purchases, making Ortega the landlord of large companies like AmazonApple, Google, Spotify and even some Inditex rivals like Primark. This strategy allows Pontegadea to obtain income from the property from day one. In the case of the new logistics center, its main tenants are the brands Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, two of the best-known brands in the textile sector, and both under the umbrella of the American parent company PVH (Phillips-Van-Heusen). They are brands with financial muscle, which turns the rental into a stable and low-risk income for Pontegadea. Amancio Ortega insists on logistics. This is not the first time that Pontegadea has set its sights (and its investments) on logistics in the Netherlands. In 2025, the group already purchased a logistics center in Hoofddorp for 145 million euros, leased to the operator GXO and with an area of ​​67,000 m2, in which it was considered the largest logistics operation closed in 2025. In 2023, Pontegadea will also acquired a logistics warehouse of 103,000 m3 in Venlo, which had the logistics and transport firm DSV as a tenant. In that case, the deal was closed for 105 million euros. It is a strategic enclave. According to the DHL Global Connectivity IndexThe Netherlands is the third best connected country in the world in terms of logistics. The port of Rotterdam is the largest on the continent and the gateway for much of the merchandise from Asia and America. Its infrastructure network, its central geographical position in Europe and its legal framework make it a particularly attractive place for those who want to store and move goods on a European scale. What the new purchase of Pontegadea denotes is that the Dutch logistics market seems to have gone from being a one-time bet for Ortega, to becoming an investment line recurring for the millionaire. In Xataka | With his profits from Inditex, Amancio Ortega has become something: the biggest real estate magnate on the planet Image | GTRES, Unsplash (Isaac Maffeis)

has just opened its warehouse and delivery network to any company in the world

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For decades, Amazon has built its business one of the most powerful distribution infrastructures on the planet, one that allows its workers to ship products anywhere in the world extremely efficiently. Now he is going to make it available to any business that wants to use it. global network. amazon has announced the launch of Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), a service with which any company, not just its marketplace sellers, will be able to access its global logistics network. Transport by sea, air, road and rail; warehouses; distribution centers; and last mile delivery: all under one umbrella and available for companies in all types of sectors, whether healthcare, automotive, manufacturing or retail, among others. Why does it matter? Amazon has a fleet of more than one hundred cargo planes, only behind FedEx and UPS, thousands of warehouses and sorting centers around the world, and its own last-mile delivery service. In fact, according to data from ShipMatrix, this parcel service is already the largest in the United States by volume, ahead of UPS, FedEx and the US Postal Service. What changes now is that all that capacity, previously reserved for its own sellers and internal operations, is formally opened to the market. Likewise, the movement turns Amazon into a gigantic logistics operator, what is known in the sector as 3PL (third-party logistics provider) and places it in direct competition with giants such as DHL, Kuehne + Nagel or DSV. According to data From the consulting firm Armstrong & Associates, it is estimated that this global market moves more than 1.3 trillion dollars. The parallelism with AWS. In 2006, the company took the technological infrastructure it had built to run its own business and began selling it to third parties. This is how Amazon Web Services was borntoday the largest cloud service provider in the world. Now try to replicate that model with logistics. “Amazon brings the infrastructure, intelligence and scale of its decades-proven supply chain services to businesses around the world, just as Amazon Web Services did with cloud computing,” counted Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, in the company’s official statement. Variety of services. According to the company, ASCS offers services divided into four large blocks: Transportation of goods (sea, air, land and rail freight). Distribution and storage with automated inventory forecasting. Preparation and shipping of orders through any sales channel, including rival platforms such as Walmart, Shopify, Shein or TikTok. Parcel delivery with deadlines of between two and five days, seven days a week. A blow to the sector. Following the news, FedEx and UPS shares fell more than 9% each after the announcement, while GXO Logistics plummeted around 13% and DHL lost 7.3%. For these companies it is a direct competitive blow, and according to analysts from the Baird firm, the impact could also extend to air and maritime cargo transport operators. With this blow on the table, another of the threatened segments is business-to-business (B2B) logistics, a niche with a high profit margin where UPS and FedEx have been focusing all these years. Between the lines. Beyond the competitive threat, Amazon seeks to monetize an infrastructure that already exists and in which it has been investing for almost thirty years. The company was already according to Armstrong & Associatesthe world’s largest logistics operator by gross revenue in 2025, although its services were sold in a fragmented manner and without a unified proposition for external clients. “They have warehousing operations, transportation management, and international air and sea freight, but they did not have a coordinated sale like 3PL, although together they are already the largest,” counted Evan Armstrong, CEO of Armstrong & Associates, told the Wall Street Journal. Customer data. Opening the network to external companies raises a question: what does Amazon do with the information of its logistics clients? The company has already been accused in the past of using data from sellers in its marketplace to compete against them, something it has always denied. Larsen assures told the WSJ that Amazon explicitly prohibits using ASCS customer data to make decisions in its own marketplace, citing the fact that hundreds of thousands of sellers already use its logistics services for channels outside of Amazon. Cover image | Garakhan Safarli and Claudio Schwarz In Xataka | What is the cheapest Amazon device you can use Alexa+ on?

“We didn’t expect this.” A Ukrainian drone has revealed a Russian arsenal in a warehouse, and the surprise has been huge: the missiles are animals

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From the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when tanks were advancing while logistics columns were bogged down and fuel was scarce, the war began to reveal an uncomfortable paradox: the more modern it became in the skies, more “medieval” It was done on the ground. In fact, in that space where drones, satellites and trenches coexist, the return of solutions from the past apparently overcome was an early sign that the conflict was going to be, above all, a test of resistance. The latest Ukrainian discovery has confirmed that the wear and tear is tremendous. The return of the war of attrition. The irony is that the war in Ukraine has been shedding any illusion of modernity to return, as the days go by, to brutal logic of wear, one in which the quantity and capacity to take losses They weigh more than any technological “game changer”, and where the Russian army, pressured by the massive consumption of material and men, is beginning to show obvious signs of logistical exhaustion. On the southern and eastern front, the shortage of armored vehicles and modern systems is no longer hidden with silence, but is manifest in improvised solutions reminiscent of conflicts from another era and centuries, while Moscow insists on maintaining constant pressure on Ukrainian defenses at any cost. Cavalry in the 21st century. This wear and tear became visible at the beginning of 2026 when Ukrainian units detected and neutralized Russian assaults carried out on horseback, a tactic that seemed banished from modern warfare but that reappeared in sectors such as Oleskiivka in response to lack of means conventional. We are talking about small assault groups that advanced mounted, supported by prior reconnaissance, in infiltration attempts that ended up being aborted by drones and fire defensive, leaving such an absurd image (and repeated) as revealing: many horses survived, but the soldiers did not, and the Russian army confirmed that it was willing to resort to any available resources to sustain its offensive. The drone and the impossible arsenal. Now, the scene What finally condensed this drift came several weeks later, when a Ukrainian drone sneaked through the destroyed roof of a hidden warehouse, several kilometers from the line of contact, with the usual expectation of finding ammunition, fuel or military vehicles. What happened gives an idea of ​​these four years of slow war that has worn down both sides. Instead of artillery and technology to advance, the camera showed something that looked like something out of a rural garage: aging civilian cars, motorcycles from another era, and saddled horses, an “arsenal” as unexpected as it is eloquent of the state of the war in many areas. The message. “We didn’t expect to see this. It was really unusual,” said the drone pilot. to the Insider mediumspeaking on condition that he only be identified by his callsign “Cosmos.” “We were hoping to find some armored vehicles,” he added. He video It went viral because it summarized in seconds the real state of Russian logistics, but also because it demonstrated that those animals were not an isolated anecdote, but part of a system that already uses cheap and expendable media to move and attack under the constant threat of drones. Russia and the logic of sacrifice. For the Ukrainian commanders, this discovery is neither trivial nor a simple curiosity, but rather proof of a way of waging war based on accepting massive losses of material and personnel, replacing armored by civilian cars and horses because they are easier to replace. This logic, which prioritizes the attrition of the enemy, even if the cost is enormous, explains why Moscow continues to advance slowly, launching assaults with many times obsolete or improvised in regions such as Donbas, even when the monthly casualty figures, according to NATOreach levels that are difficult to sustain. If you will, the drone that expected to find missiles and found animals ended up portraying, better than any report, a war that moves backwards while consuming everything at hand. Image | 82nd Air Assault Brigade, State Border Guard Service of Ukraine In Xataka | It is evident that Russia can absorb thousands and thousands of casualties. So Ukraine is already designing a much riskier plan In Xataka | An unprecedented experiment is happening in Ukraine: bombs have turned dogs into other animals

A deep warehouse that will save waste until 2100

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A few weeks ago, more than 1,800 nuclear waste drivers They began to emerge of the seabed on the Galician coast. The image, as real as symbolic, reopened an old debate: what do we do with the remains of an era that goes out, but does not disappear? While Galicia demands answers and surveillance, another nuclear issue advances without noise, although equally urgent: the fate of the waste that will leave the centrals when they close from 2027. Nuclear energy is out of exit. The problem is that their waste does not know how to leave. A provisional container. The Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) has given the approval, with its conditions, to the design of the Hi-Storm FW container version G. According to the official CSN press releaseEnresa, the public company in charge of managing radioactive waste, has requested this container that will serve to temporarily store the spent Almaraz fuel, Ascó, chest and vandellós II. It is not a definitive solution, but necessary: each unit can contain up to 37 fuel elements of pressure water reactors (PWR) or 89 of boiling water (BWR), and its role will be key during the works of dismantling between 2027 and 2035. Nuclear energy turns off, but their waste needs a place – sure – while the country decides how to bury them forever. More in depth. This movement is part of something much bigger. According to The economist has detailedEnresa has officially reactivated the deep geological warehouse project (AGP), after almost three decades paralyzed. The first phase has already been awarded to the specialized consultant Amphos 21. AGP is, in simple terms, an underground nuclear cemetery. As We have explained in Xatakathe objective is to isolate waste in stable geological formations for thousands – or hundreds of thousands – of years, combining natural barriers with artificial confinement technology. According to Enresathe calendar extends until 2100, and the project is divided into eight stages that cover from initial scientific studies to the construction and eventual sealed. In early stages. Right now it is in phase one: collecting technologies, reviewing technical documentation and preparing the legislative framework that will be defined between 2026 and 2028, According to the economist. From 2029, possible locations will be selected, which will be evaluated in depth until 2039. The construction of the underground laboratory and the technical and environmental licensing process will cover up to 2059. The AGP will be operational by 2073, and will work up to 2100, when its definitive seal is expected. All this is inspired by a specific model: onkalo, The first European AGP in Europein Finland. The project is excavated more than 400 meters deep and is designed to store waste for 100,000 years, where a century will remain open and will then be sealed irreversibly. The electric, uncomfortable with the deadlines. But not everyone is satisfied with the calendar. As we already detail in XatakaEndesa, Iberdrola, Naturgy and EDP, owners of the reactors, have asked the government to advance the implementation of the AGP to 2050. The reason: they want to release the land from the centrals before and allocate them to new industrial uses. In parallel, they have resorted to the Supreme Court the rise of the “Enresa Rate”, which finances nuclear dismantling, considering it an unforeseen and unjustified extra cost. Business pressure puts a background debate on the table: Who should assume the real cost of nuclear energy once it stops producing electricity? And meanwhile? After the failure of the centralized warehouse project in Villar de Cañas (Cuenca), which He was discarded by the new general radioactive waste plan. Spain has opted for a decentralized network of Silos, one by central. However, there is a problem because these stores were not designed for more than 50 years. Therefore, initiatives such as the Hi-Storm FW container are crucial: they allow to strengthen the safety of intermediate storage and gain time while the AGP becomes a reality. And is it the only possible way? Ultimately, the best nuclear residue is the one that is not generated. Here We have talked about technologies such as nuclear fusioneven in an experimental phase, they do not generate hazardous waste. Even within the fission, there are improvement margins: molten or thorium salts reactors would allow fuel to better take better advantage and generate shorter radioactive life. But as long as those options are not profitable, the AGPs remain the only viable viable route. A long -term challenge. Spain has decided to close its nuclear stage, but the waste does not go out with the reactor. The country faces a technical, environmental and moral responsibility that will accompany us for generations. The approval of the Hi-Storm FW container and the AGP reactivation are only the beginning of a long-term race that will be played underground. And in a world that changes every decade, few decisions require thinking of deadlines of 100,000 years. The legacy of nuclear energy forces us, for the first time, to plan as if we were going to be here forever. Image | Unspash Xataka | After confirming the closure of its nuclear power plants, Spain seeks where to build a radioactive waste cemetery

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