Interroll acquires Royal Apollo Group

Interroll has acquired Royal Apollo Group, adding Netherlands-based vertical conveying, logistics systems, and baling technology to its global material handling portfolio.

Royal Apollo Group is headquartered in the Netherlands and has a history stretching back nearly 180 years. The company provides vertical conveying solutions, including spiral conveyor systems, and also operates in logistics systems and baling markets. Its footprint includes three manufacturing sites and a global sales, service, and spare-parts organisation.

The acquisition strengthens Interroll’s conveying portfolio by adding spiral conveyor technology, an increasingly important product area in space-constrained warehouses, production logistics, parcel handling, and manufacturing distribution environments. As operators look to increase throughput without expanding footprints, the vertical movement of goods inside facilities is becoming a more strategic part of system design.

Lifecycle services and spare-parts capability form another important part of the transaction. Material handling customers are placing greater emphasis on uptime, maintainability, and retrofit options as automation becomes more deeply embedded in daily operations. In conveyor-led environments, downtime can affect entire process flows, which makes service coverage and component availability central to the buying decision.

Warehouse automation suppliers are being reshaped by consolidation, ownership changes, and demand for more integrated systems. IN Supply recently reported that Honeywell agreed to sell its Warehouse and Workflow Solutions business to American Industrial Partners, moving another major automation supplier into a new ownership structure.

The market is still growing, but investment discipline has tightened. The pandemic-era scramble for fulfilment capacity has been replaced by closer scrutiny of returns, resilience, and integration. Operators still need automation, although they increasingly want systems that can be phased, maintained, connected with warehouse software, and adapted to changing order profiles.

Spiral conveyors sit neatly in that environment. They allow goods to move vertically between levels while preserving floor space and maintaining continuous product flow. In multi-level warehouses, mezzanine operations, production sites, and automated sortation environments, vertical conveying can determine whether a building operates efficiently or becomes constrained by lifts, manual handling, and fragmented movement.

Royal Apollo’s manufacturing and service network also gives Interroll additional reach into applications where customers need more than individual components. Modern intralogistics projects are often assembled through system integrators using a mixture of conveyors, sorters, shuttles, robotics, controls, and software. Suppliers able to support integrators with modular hardware and lifecycle service are better placed to win repeat projects across multiple sites.

The acquisition also underlines the continuing role of mechanical automation. Autonomous mobile robots, orchestration software, and vision systems are attracting significant attention, yet physical flow still depends on dependable movement of cartons, totes, pallets, parcels, and production materials. Conveyors have not disappeared from warehouse automation; they are being integrated more closely with newer systems.

Industrial customers are under pressure to handle labour shortages, fragmented product ranges, and higher service expectations without adding unnecessary building space. Equipment that improves vertical density and flow can reduce manual touches and create better use of existing assets. That requirement is especially clear in brownfield facilities, where layout constraints often shape the automation strategy more than ideal process diagrams.

Interroll’s acquisition of Royal Apollo deepens its ability to support compact, high-throughput, serviceable material handling systems. As warehouse automation becomes more selective and more closely tied to real-estate efficiency, the ability to move products vertically, reliably, and with strong service backup is becoming a valuable part of intralogistics design.