China's warehouse robots set to ease Japan's logistics crunch

Startups see Japanese market as testing ground ahead of domestic growth

Quicktron's autonomous mobile robots move and shelve bins in warehouses.

KOHEI FUJIMURA and HIROFUMI MIYOSHI, Nikkei staff writers

January 21, 2024 11:15 JST

DALIAN, China/TOKYO -- Chinese warehouse robot startups are keen on landing orders in Japan, a market scrambling to resolve a looming bottleneck in the logistics industry.

Syrius Robotics, based in Shenzhen, expects to deliver 3,000 robots to Japan annually in two years, or 10 times the current volume. The automatons approach human parcel pickers, display which items should be placed in the baskets, then move the products to be shipped.