Sortation
Getting items to the right place at the right time is a fundamental need in fulfillment operations. Success requires a combination of software, hardware, and know-how to create the right solution. Sorter applications include facility routing, order consolidation, inventory distribution, workstation balancing, buffering, staging, shipping and more; often functions mission critical for operations.
Types of Sortation
Whether the application is shipping, facility routing, order consolidation, inventory distribution, workstation balancing, buffering, or staging, designing the right sortation solution takes more than picking a piece of equipment. It starts with understanding the items being handled, the rate required, how products are packaged, how they’re inducted, and how they exit the sorter. Add to that the flow of the building, the sorter’s technical capabilities, and its ability to adapt to business changes.
When applied correctly, sortation unlocks operational capacity and efficiency. When it’s not, it becomes a bottleneck that can impact the entire operation.
High-Speed Sortation 100 - 350 cpm+
TrewSort Sliding Shoe Sorter
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Trew’s Sliding Shoe Sorter delivers high-capacity, high accuracy, gentle positive divert sortation of cartons, totes, jiffys, and polybags. Sliding shoe sorters are used in routing and shipping operations and are typically mission critical for successful operations. TrewSort’s AI self-learning actuators and inherent design for operations, maintenance, and installation deliver sortation capabilities to keep your systems running reliably at peak performance.
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TrewTouch™
TrewTouch is an advanced product‑handling approach designed to bring greater accuracy and control to high‑rate sliding‑shoe sortation. By fine‑tuning divert velocity, shoe path, and shoe material, TrewTouch enables smoother product acceleration during the divert process - reducing disruption and maintaining stability as throughput increases. The result is improved product handling in mixed‑item environments, fewer missorts, and more consistent sortation performance across demanding retail, ecommerce, and parcel operations.
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Mid-Rate Sortation 45 - 200 cpm
TrewSort® Swivel Wheel
TrewSort Swivel Wheel delivers flexible, reliable mid-rate sortation for parcel operations, ecommerce fulfillment, manufacturing, and mixed-item distribution. SmartRow™ technology enables independent control of each wheel row, delivering accurate, high-capacity sortation with very small product gaps to maximize throughput. Its modular design supports a wide range of product profiles - including cartons, totes, polybags, flats, and mixed parcel sizes - ensuring smooth, precise routing across diverse applications. Wheel Grip Technology maintains product orientation for controlled diverts, reducing missorts and improving efficiency. Durable wheel assemblies and plug-and-play row modules simplify maintenance, minimizing downtime while providing adaptable, high-performance sortation.
TrewSort® Wheel Divert
TrewSort Wheel Divert is a proven pneumatic linear sortation solution that delivers
dependable, high-speed diverting of cartons and totes in case-conveyance applications. Pneumatically actuated wheels provide precise 30-degree diverts while maintaining conveying speed and product orientation, ensuring accurate routing without sacrificing throughput. This robust, easy-to-maintain design makes the Wheel Divert an ideal choice for facilities seeking reliable performance and long-term operational efficiency.
90º Strip Belt Sorter
90º Strip Belt Sorters provide quiet higher throughput bi-directional transfers of cartons and totes where their orientation is not maintained; ideal for buffering and routing applications with a high number of parallel divert lanes.
30º Strip Belt Sorter
30⁰ Strip Belt Sorters divert items using pop-up wheels located at various locations along the length of the sorter. The design features quiet bi-directional diverting of cartons and totes while maintaining orientation.
Low-Rate Sortation < 45 cpm
Motorized Roller Diverts
Motorized Roller Diverts are typically part of a motorized roller solution often used in low-rate tote and carton handling applications.
Right Angle Transfers
Right Angle Transfers are typically part of a motorized roller solution transporting totes and cartons, often used in pick-and-pass and workstation areas.
Unit Sortation
Shuttle Sortation
Stride™ Shuttle Sorter is an automated store replenishment fulfillment & sortation alternative to put walls and item loop sortation that can increase order fulfillment by up to 4X, maximize shipping container cube utilization by up to 10%, and fit in a compact footprint.
Push Tray Unit Sorter
Push Tray Unit Sorters are flexible single sided sorters capable of handling a wide range of products like polybags, apparel, odd-shaped items to heavy cartons on the same sorter, using a pusher element to positively divert products. In applications with a wide range of items size, the twin pusher design can double the throughput capacity of the sorter.
Split Tray Unit Sorter
Split Tray Unit Sorters are used to sort relatively lightweight items in high throughput ecommerce, omnichannel, retail fulfillment, postal, laundry, and pharmaceutical applications. Due to the unique tray shape, non-conveyable and round objects can be handled on this sorter in addition to standard products, such as apparel, postal flats and packages, books, pharmaceuticals, polybags, multi-media, jewelry, accessories and more.
Cross Tray Unit Sorter
Cross Tray Unit Sorter is used in applications that need to sort the smallest, lightest, and least conveyable items. The sorter is suitable for small parcels, ecommerce items, fashion, shoe boxes, sportswear, and pharmaceutical products.
Cross-Belt Unit Sorter
Cross-Belt Unit Sorter is used for the highest throughput, operational flexibility, and handling the widest range of items - small to large. They are often the best solutions for non-conveyable, apparel, and light items as well as envelopes, parcels, totes, and heavy packages. They fit well in many applications such as ecommerce, apparel, footwear, parcel, and cross docking operations.
A sorter is only a part of the story in tailoring a solution for your business. During conception, we will listen to you about your business and goals, collaboratively work through alternatives for induction, sortation logic, destination configurations, after-sort design, and the operations downstream of the sort.