Ten years ago, ZangaBee was just getting started. We were a young startup with big ambitions, learning every day, experimenting, and figuring out how to create real value for our customers. Looking back, those early years were full of excitement, uncertainty, and countless lessons that shaped who we are today.
As we celebrate our 10th anniversary, we want to use this milestone to shine a spotlight on 10 startups that remind us of our own journey. Companies with fresh ideas, strong execution, and the potential to make a real impact. Throughout this anniversary series, we’re introducing one startup at a time that we believe is worth keeping an eye on.
The next startup we’d like to introduce is Optioryx.
Giving warehouses more intelligence
Optioryx builds software that sits on top of a warehouse management system (WMS) and works out the best way to run core processes.
Its Pulse platform chooses the right box or pallet build for each order, plans picking routes and decides where each SKU should be stored.
Flux, its second product, turns a phone into a dimensioning tool, so warehouses can measure items, parcels and pallets without a fixed dimensioning station.
The WMS stays in place. Optioryx connects through an API and sends back better instructions: the right carton for the packer, a shorter route for the picker.
The idea came from watching warehouse teams handle million-dollar problems with Excel, gut feeling and complicated workarounds. Those teams knew their operations well. Their tools couldn’t do the maths.
How packing decides the shipping bill
Packing is where our work and Optioryx’s meet. At ZangaBee, we’ve been working with shipping and packing cost calculators in our integration projects and how they fit into our customers’ application landscapes.
For many of our customers, packing larger order quantities well has a real effect on packing and shipping costs. It saves them money and lets them offer their own customers a better deal.
Every shipment involves two decisions: how it’s packed and which carrier moves it.
The first one limits the second, because the way you pack decides which carriers and rates you can use. Pack to just under a weight break and a cheaper carrier opens up. The same can happen when you split an order into two parcels instead of one, which sounds backwards until you see the rates. Optioryx works out these packing decisions for every order.
Voltex, an electrical accessories manufacturer in Australia and New Zealand, is a good example. Its old WMS module suggested a carton per order, and pickers often had to repack before the box went on the conveyor, with too much air still shipped. Now, when an order is ready for dispatch, the WMS asks the Optioryx API which cartons to use and which items go in each, and packers follow those instructions. Voltex repacks less and reports lower freight, packaging and labour costs.
Simulating the gain
Before changing anything on the floor, warehouses want to know what an optimization will do in their own operations. Optioryx lets them find out first.
For packing, a warehouse can replay how it shipped its past orders and see exactly what packing optimization would have saved. The same idea works for layout and picking: Pulse includes a digital twin of the warehouse, built from the customer’s own data, where continuous improvement engineers can test ideas such as adding a cross-aisle or switching to a new trolley type before anyone moves a rack.
Because the current operation sits next to the optimized version, teams can back their business case with their own figures before they decide.
From startup to global impact
Optioryx’s journey has already brought several important milestones.
The company won the CMA CGM Startup Awards in the Logistics category and successfully tested its warehouse optimisation software with CEVA Logistics at several European sites.
Today, Optioryx works with around 70 clients across more than 100 warehouses in 28 countries.
For a startup focused on solving complex warehouse challenges, that’s impressive progress and a clear sign that the problem they’re addressing exists far beyond a single market.
What’s next?
Optioryx is on a mission to help more warehouses get more out of the operations they already run. Many operations assume that working faster means buying robots or replacing systems. Optioryx is betting that much of the gain is already in their existing WMS data and current setup, waiting for better decisions.
By adding intelligence to the systems warehouses already have, Optioryx wants to help businesses become more efficient through better decisions and better use of their data, without necessarily investing in expensive robots or replacing existing systems.
We wish the Optioryx team every success and look forward to following their journey.
