Demetrius Tsafaridis, President & CEO of CareGo spent the first 12 years of his career working at a large integrated steel manufacturer giving him the unique opportunity to learn all about how the steel industry works. But, an entrepreneur at heart, Demet started out on his own venture back in 1997 as T & T Warehousing. In 1999, Steelcare, as CareGo was known back then, specialized in providing third party logistics to the steel manufacturers and distributers in the Hamilton, Ontario area. Traditionally 3PL logistics in a commodity-based market is a low margin, high-risk play but Demet’s willingness to take very calculated risks and ability to think outside the box allowed Steelcare to quickly grow. With Demet’s ability to read the market he quickly realized that opportunities to transform the business using technology to increase his margins, reduce storage size and introduce automation were necessary to adapt to the changing markets. It was Demet’s vision of how this technology should operate which created our flagship product TELIA, a product developed out of a need to service this industry. Fast forward another 15 years to present day and this vision has transformed the company yet again into a technology only firm called CareGo, whose product TELIA now operates over 100 automated assets around the world helping other steel service centers, mills, and distribution centers meet their storage and throughput needs in an optimized manner.

TELIA was born out of necessity, and as such, a market exists to move large, heavy products in an automated manner, removing personnel from large unsafe storage fields of coil, plate, slabs, sheets, pipes and tubes to name a few. TELIA has a significant amount of R&D behind her to ensure that the precision automation being delivered will not only safely move, store, stack and retrieve these products but will also store them optimally to reduce the overall footprint of the non-value added storage end of our client’s facilities and maximize the use of each resource to always ensure they are working on the next most critical task. Demet recognizes that the market is full of automated storage and retrieval systems, or automated cranes, but they look to automate the current situation. TELIA uses a combination of systems, data analytics, algorithms, and precision automation to reinvent how our clients move, store and retrieve with a goal of what their business needs. Not many of clients make money stockpiling inventory, they are looking to make, process and ship to their customers more efficiently and that’s what TELIA does

In an instance, one of CareGo’s most repeat customers, Zekelman Industries, was looking to bring a dormant facility back to life and return it to full capacity. They had struggled in the past to hire and maintain labor in the materials handling end of the facility so they were looking to bring the facility back with limited labour in the finishing goods end of the facility. TELIA automated and optimized their storage footprint, moving bundles directly off the mills and into storage. As an integral part of the revitalization of the facility, Carego was fundamental to creating one of the best operating cost structures for Zekelman at this facility.

CareGo has recently created a strategic roadmap which includes how they plan to grow their company globally. “As far as technology goes the sky is the limit, we at CareGo are looking at how we can help our customers realize the full potential of the IoT by intelligently communicating with multiple systems, utilizing data analytics, predictive analytics and AI to be smart about how we operate TELIA,” says Demet. “We are also working on the autonomous intralogistics facility of the future where personnel no longer have to load / unload trucks and rail cars, and the rest is behind closed doors!” and other surprise innovations coming to the market soon.