530 robots for the next chapter

Thalia, the largest bookseller in the German-speaking market, generated sales of €2.3 billion on its platform in fiscal 2025/26 and is growing against the industry trend. To keep it that way, the company has built an omnichannel hub in Marl for around €100 million. Its centerpiece is Germany's largest AutoStore system, with 530 robots and 280,000 bin locations.

Thalia is, by its own account, the market-leading omnichannel bookseller in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and the largest bookseller in the German-speaking market. The company employs around 7,000 people. Its network combines its own bookstores in Germany and Austria, online shops and an app, a 50 percent stake in Orell Füssli Thalia in Switzerland, and independent partner bookshops that use Thalia's expertise in purchasing, IT and online retail. The group also includes the toy retailer Thalia Spielwaren, the specialist information provider Lehmanns Media and the tolino alliance, which Thalia co-founded in 2013.

The Thalia platform, which includes all partner companies in the DACH region, generated around €2.3 billion in the fiscal year that ended in September 2026 (fiscal 2025/26). That is 4.5 percent more than the €2.2 billion of the previous year. Online business was the growth driver with an increase of more than 6 percent, while brick-and-mortar sales rose by 1.4 percent. Book sales grew by 2 percent, and book-related ranges such as stationery and gifts by a good 6 percent. E-books gained around 7 percent and audiobooks around 22 percent.

The network is growing as well. It now comprises 613 bookstores, 42 more than a year earlier, driven partly by the partner model for independent booksellers. In addition, there are 41 toy specialty stores, which are gradually being rebranded as "Spielzeit by Thalia". CEO Ingo Kretzschmar sees tailwind in the fact that Thalia is growing "significantly against the industry trend".

For logistics, this growth points in a clear direction. It comes mainly from online sales and from ranges beyond books. At the Marl hub, non-book items account for about 30 percent of volume and books for about 70 percent, according to Head of Operations Tobias Bizorek. As early as May 2025, Marco Rebohm, Managing Director Supply Chain & Logistics, stressed that steady growth and a widening assortment require "future-proof, scalable technologies".

On October 1, 2026, Thalia officially opened its omnichannel hub in the gate.ruhr commercial park in Marl. It stands on the site of the former Auguste Victoria 3/7 colliery, where coal was mined until 2015. Because the foundations of the old power plant were still in the ground, the decision was made to backfill the entire area. Site manager Andreas Hennig speaks of 30,000 truckloads.

The property covers around 56,000 square meters with five halls and an office building. Thalia says it invested around €100 million. The project developer was ECE Work & Live, which became ParkProperty Europe in March 2026, and the general contractor was Goldbeck. Groundbreaking in December 2024 was followed by the topping-out ceremony in June 2025. Operations began ramping up in early 2026, and the first shipments left the hub in February.

The site supplies the bookstores and toy specialty stores as well as online customers. About 200 people work there at present. According to Mayor Thomas Terhorst, the number is soon to reach 600, and at full build-out there will be up to 1,000 jobs and apprenticeships.

AutoStore is a cube storage system. Goods are held in plastic bins that are stacked into columns inside a grid, up to 16 levels high in Marl. There are no aisles between racks. Robots drive on rails on top of the grid, so they sit on top of the warehouse. When an item is needed from a bin deeper down, the robots move the bins above it aside, lift out the one required and carry it to a port at the edge of the system.

A worker stands at that port. The goods come to the person rather than the person going to the goods. Pick-by-light shows which item to take and in what quantity, and according to Element Logic's plans up to four target containers can be served at once. The items end up in totes that travel along several kilometers of conveyor technology to the goods-out area. Depending on the order and the type of goods, packing is automatic or manual. Goods are stored through separate ports, and the original concept provided for 69 picking ports and 27 ports for goods receiving.

The system was realized by the German subsidiary of the Norwegian system integrator Element Logic, which acted as general contractor for the intralogistics. The overall project manager describes the sight of 530 robots dancing across the grid, seen from the maintenance platform. It looks chaotic, he says, but follows a "very sophisticated system" that has been optimized over years.

The special quality lies less in a single component than in the interplay of several features.

Density. Because no aisles are needed, goods are stored more tightly than in a conventional rack warehouse. In Marl, up to 10 million items fit into 280,000 bin locations. The system is currently the most powerful installation of its kind in Germany and, according to the project manager, one of the most powerful worldwide. For books, which are small, easy to handle and exist in enormous variety, this is a good fit.

Parallel work and scalability. The 530 robots work simultaneously and serve many ports at once, instead of a single storage and retrieval machine traveling down one aisle. Performance grows with the number of robots, and the project manager names an expansion option of up to 780 robots for Marl. If one robot fails, the others take over its work and the system keeps running.

Learning storage placement. The software sorts goods by how often they are accessed. Popular titles sit near the top of the columns, rarely requested ones lower down. Christmas titles can rest deep in the stack during summer and move up before the season. On top of this, according to Kretzschmar, an AI-supported order management system learns from order patterns when orders are regularly split across two warehouses and can suggest holding items at a different site.

Controllable order waves. Orders are released in waves. On Mondays there is a peak in the business with end customers, and new releases and click-and-collect orders can be prioritized and partly routed past the regular process sequence. Rebohm describes the aim as being fast and flexible and anticipating requirements from the market.

Not everything fits into a bin. Large or bulky items such as bicycles or toys go through a separate manual process, as do special cases such as damaged goods or deviations from the delivery note. The AutoStore is also supplied by a narrow-aisle warehouse with around 25,000 pallet positions, which replenishes stock. If, for example, 700 of 1,000 stored copies of a title are sold within three days, the merchandise management system triggers replenishment from the pallet warehouse.

Marl complements Thalia's warehouse in Hörselgau in Thuringia, which is operated by Rhenus and has also used an AutoStore system with 530 robots since May 2025, there with 240,000 bins. Thalia is thus pursuing a two-warehouse strategy in which stock, replenishment and order routing are coordinated across both sites.

Further expansion is conceivable on the land next to the hub. Hennig mentions printing machines for print-on-demand, shelving for the Thalia Retail Concepts system business and additional transshipment processes. One concrete project on this land, however, appears to be delayed. In October 2025, Thalia and Elanders Print & Packaging announced a long-term cooperation for a digital printing center in the hub. Elanders, by its own description Europe's leading digital printing service provider, was to build and operate it, while Thalia would contribute retail, distribution and its contacts with publishers. The aim was a model that closely links print-on-demand with logistics and relieves publishers.

A year later, there is nothing to see of it yet in the hub. The announcements for the opening do not mention the digital printing center, and Hennig cites print-on-demand printing machines only as a conceivable future use of the neighboring land. Thalia has not named a start date on the information available, nor any reasons for the delay.

On balance, the message of the site is clear. Thalia is investing in capacity before growth from online, toys and book-related ranges pushes its logistics to the limit.