Mortadelo will work to deliver more than 135,000 books a day from Cerdanyola.

Cerdanyola del VallèsMortadelo has found a new job in Cerdanyola del Vallès. From now on, the popular secret agent created by Francisco Ibáñez It will be installed in the new logistics center that Penguin Random House has just opened in Cerdanyola del Vallès, becoming one of the robots that fulfill orders day and night, from Monday to Friday, although these weeks before Sant Jordi it also works Saturdays and Sundays. From this large 42,000 m warehouse², which cost 36 million euros, an average of 135,000 books will be published every day.

The robot Mortadelo walks busily through one of the aisles of the hub, which according to Penguin CEO Núria Cabutí, is "the most advanced center in Europe" in the publishing sector thanks to the "cutting-edge technology" controlled by its 130 employees. What's most striking is that the human staff coexists with two divisions of relentlessly efficient robots. On one side of the center are the 24 locus, collaborative robots in charge of serving high-turnover orders –novelties, bestsellers and classics–, among them Mortadelo, because each one has been baptized with the name of a comic book character, such as Superlópez and Mafalda; in the other, the 54 skypods, which travel at full speed along a closed circuit and climb up some of the metal towers full of volumes with the aim of "satisfying 1,300 lines of picking "every hour," says Martí Torra, the center's logistics director. "A large order is just as important as one for one or two copies," he adds.

The skypods They quickly transport their cargo in boxes that reach the human workers, who select the ordered copies and place them in cardboard boxes that will later go through a new industrial process, a closing machine that doesn't use a single crumb of plastic. "Both the center and the processes have been designed with maximum respect for sustainability," says Núria Cabutí. The worker takes a copy of Perfidious Albion, of Paul Preston, another of The seducers, of James Ellroy, and two copies of the comic Mortadelo and Filemón vs. Jimmy the Catxondo.

A publishing giant with 61 labels

On the other side of the center, collaboration between robots and humans must be closer. Each locus, including Mortadelo, load four boxes that must be filled with the appropriate orders. To complete the process, they must identify themselves, enter the correct barcode, and enter the number of copies requested. When a human is nearby, the robots stop and wait patiently for a clear path to continue working. "We are 130 workers, divided into three shifts: morning, afternoon, and night," explains Martí Torra. "In the weeks leading up to Sant Jordi, demand grows significantly, and we could serve up to 300,000 books per day." Ten trailers leave the Cerdanyola center each day with the orders, which take between 24 and 96 hours to reach the point of sale. "Right now we have 20 million copies of 24,000 titles in stock, but they only take up 60% of the warehouse," he continues. "If we expand, we can easily reach 30 million."

Penguin Random House has had to abandon its existing logistics center in Pallejà because it had outgrown its facilities. "We have 61 imprints in Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese," says Núria Cabutí. The group sells around 35 million copies annually, but with the increased capacity of the logistics center and sustained sales growth, the figure could go much further: Over the last decade, the publishing sector has grown by 30% in Spain.. In addition, Penguin Random has opened a new business area dedicated to offering logistics services to other publishing houses, which will increase the number of titles distributed from the Cerdanyola center.

Logista Libros, which distributes the Grupo Planeta collection from Guadalajara, Penguin Random House's main competitor, has 22 million copies in stock from a collection of 255,000 titles. In Catalonia, Les Punxes—which distributes more than a hundred publishing catalogs, including those of Anagrama, Acantilado, Editor Club and Siruela–, has a warehouse of more than 10,000 m², from where more than seven million copies are published annually.

"It's essential to have brave companies like Penguin Random House that are committed to the country," says the Minister of Economy of the Generalitat, Alícia Romero, in front of dozens of publishers, booksellers, distributors and some authors from the house, including Julia Navarro, Javier Cercas, José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec and Regina Rodríguez Sirvent. The author of Panties in the sun He visited the new logistics center for the second time in a few days. Last week, he went on a tour to sign 2,000 copies of a limited edition of his first novel.Panties in the sun "It's been a phenomenon, but I don't feel as much pressure as they say to write the second one," he says. "I feel like I'm still doing what I want. That's what it's all about, isn't it?"