What is included in our part of Uriekstes 4A: 2,934 m² of zones under one roof
Our part of Uriekstes iela 4A in Sarkandaugava is not the entire site of the complex but a 2,934 m² leased area that we manage operationally. Inside it, four functional zones sit under one roof: warehouse, showroom, packing workshop and office. The configuration is deliberate — one facility handles storage, packing for a specific retail order, partner meetings and operational management at the same address, without moving between separate sites and without splitting documents across several locations.
The split of space across the zones comes straight from the facility's internal plan: 1,440 m² for the warehouse as a transit hub for European supplies, 720 m² for the showroom as a contact point with partners and retail customers, 486 m² for the workshop where goods are prepared and packed to export requirements, and 288 m² for the office as an operations centre. The four zones add up to the same 2,934 m² of leased area. The geometry of the facility in Sarkandaugava is an operational feature, not a line in an address: one roof, shared receiving corridors and a single document flow make the daily cycle shorter than splitting work across separate locations in Riga.
Warehouse zone of 1,440 m²: a transit hub for European supplies
The 1,440 m² warehouse area is the largest part of our leased footprint and at the same time its main operational hub. Goods are received here directly from producers in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, pass inbound control and are then distributed to network points and partners across Europe. The logic is built not as a "box for long-term storage" but as a transit hub: the task is to move a batch through receiving, control and pre-export preparation faster than when those operations are split across multiple addresses. The volume of the warehouse is designed for parallel work in several European markets — the Baltics, Scandinavia, Poland and Germany — without desynchronising the flows between them.
Inside the warehouse, product flows are separated by handling type. Categories that go straight into cross-docking and pass in transit through Riga to the target European city are processed on a separate track — without entering long-term storage. Categories that require pre-export document review and packaging adaptation for a specific buyer enter the loop "warehouse → workshop → warehouse → outbound". Splitting the flows this way lets us simultaneously work on an inbound container from the Trans-Caspian corridor and assemble an outbound consignment for another buyer without overloading the internal schedule. This matters particularly during seasonal peaks, when the Aktau — Baku leg and the leg to Riga run on minimal time buffers.
Packing workshop 486 m² and showroom 720 m²: between receiving and the shop window
The 486 m² workshop is the zone where goods are prepared and packed to export requirements. Product moves here directly from the warehouse, then passes cleaning, sorting and packing for a specific buyer brief. The reality of European retail is that every chain works to its own standards: labelling, package size, blister or carton format, lot requirements and shelf life all differ. The workshop solves that adaptation task — the same product ships to different shelves in different formats, and each format is ready for placement without extra handling on the buyer's side. This reduces the number of returns and complaints around packaging that typically appear when goods are bought "as is" without localisation.
The 720 m² showroom is the primary contact point with partners and clients. Negotiations, tastings and product presentations happen here: a partner can see the goods in person, try them and ask questions next to the sample rather than from photos in a commercial proposal. In parallel, retail sales are available for visitors who want to take the product with them on the spot. The showroom is physically adjacent to the warehouse, which is critical for the working logic: samples for tasting and presentation are not brought in separately from another address but are taken from the current batch. This keeps the match between what a partner sees at a meeting and what later arrives at their distribution centre.
Office 288 m² and the pre-export AI control: what is checked before shipment
The 288 m² office is the operations centre from which all processes across our part of Uriekstes 4A are run. The team works here daily: receiving is coordinated, the shipment schedule is agreed, client correspondence and accompanying documents are maintained. In parallel, meetings are held with clients and partners who need a more private format outside the showroom: contract negotiations, supply terms, work on SKU specifications. The adjacency of warehouse, workshop and office means that any operational question can be resolved next to the goods themselves rather than over phone or e-mail — one of the reasons all four zones are kept under one roof.
Pre-export AI control is wired into this cluster of zones — a separate technological process that runs at the warehouse before loading and before the goods reach the EU border. It is built around a three-step scheme. Step 01 — capture: photo-records of the goods, packaging, label, accompanying documents and batch parameters are gathered into a single digital record. Step 02 — verification: the record is automatically checked against EU requirements for labelling and food safety and against profile databases for the specific category. Step 03 — report: the partner receives a short verdict — "ready", "requires correction" or "carries high risk".
The idea of the process is simple: the supplier sees the risk before shipment, not after the goods reach Europe. An error in labelling, packaging or accompanying documents can stop a batch at the EU border, and the cost of fixing it there is not comparable to fixing it at the Riga warehouse, let alone fixing it on the producer's side before shipment. A separate benefit is that the next consignment from the same supplier arrives with feedback from the previous one already absorbed, and the number of repeated corrections drops from shipment to shipment.
How the zones work together: the pallet cycle from receiving to exit into the EU
The daily pallet cycle at our facility plays out as a linear sequence of steps between the zones rather than a set of disconnected operations. Step one — receiving at the warehouse: the batch is reconciled with shipping documents, weighed and photographed on arrival. Step two — inbound control and pre-export label check: the record enters the AI verification flow against EU requirements and any non-conformities are flagged. Step three — placement either in the storage area for further distribution or straight into the packing workshop for packaging adapted to a specific buyer. Step four — final batch preparation and dispatch to the target European city.
For urgent batches passing in transit through Riga to Stockholm, Berlin or Helsinki, the cycle can close within a single shift — morning receiving, evening dispatch — without entering long-term storage. The chain warehouse → workshop → warehouse → outbound works simultaneously as an accelerator and as a consolidation tool. Batches from several suppliers across different regions of Central Asia are gathered on our site into a single outbound consignment for one buyer in the EU, which lowers delivery cost through better load on freight transport and reduces the number of receiving events on the buyer's side.
- Step 01 — receiving: batch reconciliation against documents, weighing, photo capture of the load at the dock.
- Step 02 — verification: AI verification of labelling and accompanying documents against EU requirements.
- Step 03 — report: verdict on the batch — "ready", "requires correction" or "carries high risk".
- Step 04 — placement into the warehouse or straight into the packing workshop for packaging adapted to the buyer.
- Step 05 — final batch assembly and dispatch to the target European distribution centre.
A warehouse is measured not by the total area of the complex but by how many linked zones work on a single pallet between receiving and dispatch — and how many steps a person physically takes between them.