Synnex opens new Melbourne logistics facility and HQ, talks up automation capabilities

Synnex Australia officially opened its new headquarters and purpose-built logistics facility in Oakleigh South, Melbourne on Friday, with a strong focus on automation embedded throughout.

The opening ceremony featured the unveiling of an official plaque, a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and a guided tour of the new facility, with The Hon. Danny Pearson MP, Minister for Economic Growth and Jobs in attendance alongside Ray Ming-Tse Lu, the director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia, among other guests.

With around 350 employees working at the site, the facility - which "represents a $150 million investment" in the state of Victoria, according to Pearson - boasts a total of 44,000 square metres, with a 22,000 pallet capacity and a 35-metre-high, 4,283 sqm-high bay warehouse featuring a Automated Storage and Retrieval System.

It also claims advanced robotics and automation capabilities, aiming to boost storage and dispatch capacity, with the headquarters forming part of Synnex’s global network of 26 logistics centres.

Kee Ong at the opening ceremony.

Kee Ong, who took on the group chief executive role at the distributor's headquarters in Taiwan back in 2023, said when Synnex looks at building facilities in Australia, it “always goes for automation” due to the high operation costs in the country.

“We don't have a limitation on the amount of stock we can keep, but we want to make sure that the stock [travels] faster to meet the customer demand,” he told techpartner.news.

"To do this, you can't 100% rely on manual. We need to make sure that with each process, automation is there, accountability is there, visibility, is there.”

Arthur Gimisis, who succeeded Ong in the CEO role for ANZ, said not only does the automation focus help Synnex to shift the product “much quicker and in a more efficient way”, but owning the facility means more opportunity for further innovation down the line.

“We own these facilities, so we're here for the long run. This is only phase one; phase two is coming,” he said.

“What’s important for us is it gives us a facility to enable our partners. This becomes an enablement area not just for our resellers, but also for the resellers to bring the end users for us to be able to train them too. The facility is not just logistics - it’s much more than that.”

Part of the new facility in Oakleigh South.

Ong said more broadly, Synnex is “pushing heavily” on its service platform, encouraging more connectivities between the company to both vendors and partners.

“If you don't have the interconnectivity, you cannot take on all the advantages we’ve invested in the past 10 years,” he explained.

“AI needs to be on top of the data and data comes from interconnectivity. Using AI, we are able to improve our internal process, but we want to ramp up [our] AI acceleration platform where we see  a need for us to play a role [where] we team up with ISVs and SIs, so that we can deliver the solutions to the end customer.”

He also said that a local focus is ramping up investments into vendor partner solutions, including with Microsoft, where Synnex has already achieved two specialisations, including one with Copilot.

“We're going for the third specialisation in security - that’ll be done in the next three or four months,” said Gimisis.

"We're certainly going to be investing very heavily in AI, and we know that it's moved from productivity to solutions, and it's segment specific.

“We’re [also] going to be putting a lot of effort in our eCommerce side, and what it looks like for end users to [go to] a Marketplace, to allow vendors to be able to onboard themselves and to use our resources.”

Arthur Gimisis at the opening ceremony.