When your online shopping goes on a wild ride

Singaporeans have been racking up record online shopping numbers in the last two years, probably to no one's surprise.

More parcels getting moved more frequently means logistics companies have to step up.

One answer: More sorters.

As the name suggests, they are people who, through sweat and a scanning gun, break big unsorted piles into smaller, address-specific piles.

Three years ago, as part of a writing assignment, I became a sorter. It sort of destroyed me. These people deserve every cent they earn.

Last year, online sales in Singapore were estimated to have hit $10.8 billion. A study by Facebook and consultancy Bain & Company predicted that e-commerce sales in Singapore will grow to $13 billion by the end of 2026.

Another study found that more than 70 per cent of consumers in Singapore are shopping online more frequently because of the pandemic, with more than half saying they now shop less in physical stores.

Within that larger uptick, there are interesting micro-trends: The grocery store RedMart said orders went up 15 per cent over last September's tightened restrictions.

Consumers are buying more loungewear and athleisure wear because they are working from home. The temporary closure of hairdressing salons also resulted in more self-care and grooming product buys.

Logistics company Ninja Van Singapore saw the writing on the wall years ago. But as everyone knows, in Singapore, they are not making enough humans willing to do that kind of labour. Then the pandemic hit, and expansion plans went into high speed.

Last November, its automated hub in Yio Chu Kang opened.

Inside its cavernous 80,000 sq ft space, equal to six Olympic-size swimming pools, there are two automated sorting belts, Simba and APlus, with a combined length of over 400m.

At the 24-hour facility, between 100,000 and 200,000 parcels come in every 24-hour period. The new plant has three times the handling capacity of the company's older hub in Pandan Avenue.

The floor plan is designed so no traffic snarls, of the vehicular or any other kind, can happen.

At one end of the building, trucks disgorge unsorted parcels, which then flow through the building and come out the other end, sorted and ready to be trucked out.

Simba is a wider, stronger belt that takes care of larger, heavier items - couch cushions, vacuum cleaners and such.

APlus takes the smaller, lighter items, such as phone cases or a dozen face masks.

APlus is a massive, red, U-shaped snake. At its start point, unsorted parcels are loaded by hand onto the belt. Cameras scan the air waybills, labels which contain the destination address.

The belt slopes upwards, from where they move onto a chain of moving trap doors called "split trays", joined up to make a conveyor belt.

At a point determined by the parcel's destination, the trays open with a slap.

Like a child on a playground slide, the item zips down a chute into one of many open bags dotted around the belt like red parcel-eating mouths.

Each bag holds parcels for a particular zone in Singapore. If you picture the parcels as passengers, then APlus, with its belts, trays and chutes, is a departure terminal with boarding gates.

The Yio Chu Kang hub, like Ninja Van Singapore's older hub in Pandan Avenue, serves the entire island.

The belt ride from start to finish takes about a minute and it is a mesmerising ballet of moving parts. When viewed from above, on an elevated platform, I feel I am looking at a chugging, slapping, roaring train set.

By 2025, the company hopes to do what it is doing today at its less automated facility with about half the number of workers.

Automation reduces the need to scramble for more workers during peak online shopping seasons. There is also less chance of parcel damage.

From what I see, humans are still needed, to orient the parcels the right way on the APlus belt so they can be read by the camera. Bags cannot walk by themselves from the belt to the area where they get trucked out, so people have to move them.

And, believe it or not, it seems that there are shippers who will slap an air waybill on the most flimsy thing - an open carrier bag, for example - then send it through, so someone at hub has to deal with it.

Come on people. Your package is going on a wild belt ride. Buckle up.