Indoor mapping in Johannesburg for depots, DCs and malls

Johannesburg is far from the sea, yet it is the destination of much of the country’s container trade. City Deep, south-east of the city centre, is often described as Africa’s largest inland container terminal and is linked by rail to Durban; it is one of several inland terminals the rail operator runs in Gauteng, and a further inland port at Tambo Springs, to the south-east, has long been planned. Around them, container depots, freight forwarders’ warehouses and cross-docks unpack boxes and break them down for delivery across the province.

In those buildings, Spatial Map maps the dock doors, yard slots and staging lanes and shows RFID-tagged pallets at the door that last read them, as in the Eastport Cross-Dock demo. It shows your warehouse only — terminal bookings and rail schedules stay with the terminal and the rail operator.

OR Tambo International Airport, in Ekurhuleni east of Johannesburg, is widely described as the busiest airport in Africa and is the country’s main air-cargo gateway. Forwarders, cargo handlers and bonded warehouses cluster around it, and the municipality has promoted an aerotropolis plan to grow logistics and light industry near the airfield.

Air freight is time-critical and often high-value or temperature-sensitive. On the map, build-up areas, cool rooms and secure cages carry their status, and pharmaceuticals or perishables waiting for a flight show in the room that holds them, coloured by the latest temperature. An in-app alert fires when a cool room stays out of range — see the Polar Pharma demo and the cold-chain solution.

Gauteng is the smallest province by area but the largest economy, and national retailers, wholesalers and 3PLs place their main distribution centres there: in Midrand, between Johannesburg and Pretoria on the N1; around Germiston and the East Rand industrial areas near the airport and along the R21; and on the western side of the city. Many are multi-client buildings where each client wants its own view.

The Crestline Fulfillment demo shows the pattern: 2,204 rack locations coloured from stock by bin, pick-to-light, packing, staging lanes and the trailer yard. A read-only share link gives a client its own floors and layers, with an expiry date and a view cap, and Solutions group one client’s DCs across the province.

Sandton and the northern suburbs have some of the largest malls in Africa, joined by office towers and a major convention centre, and Midrand has added more. Centre management needs service corridors, loading bays, vacant units and footfall by entrance; visitors need the lift to their parking level.

Footfall from your people counters shows as a heatmap that stops at walls, and wayfinding builds routes across floors through lifts and escalators with Fastest and Step-free options, on share links for visitors and contractors. The Lakeside Convention Center demo shows halls with booth blocks, session rooms and live occupancy across two floors.

Johannesburg grew on the Witwatersrand gold reef, and many mining, engineering and industrial groups still run their operations from offices here while their mines and plants sit in the North West, Limpopo, Mpumalanga or the Northern Cape. Spatial Map lets the head office open the same live map of a remote store or workshop as the people on site, with tagged spares and tools at their locations and reports exported to PDF or Excel for the monthly review.