Cold store flexes muscles
June 1st 2010 Powered mobile racking and Flexi trucks
allow cold store provider to maximise
storage density and pallet accessibility
Norish is a third party multi-temperature warehousing
and logistics business. The company operates seven
facilities strategically located throughout the UK that,
between them, provide in the region of 68,000 racked pallet
spaces. Of these 52,000 are temperature controlled.
In March 2008 the company completed the acquisition of a
45,000 sq ft cold store facility in Gillingham, Kent. On taking
ownership of the unit, Norish embarked on a significant
upgrade of the facility.
The previous owners had operated a storage system based
around very narrow aisle racking and turret trucks. Norish
considered this arrangement inefficient: the turret trucks, for
example, required a five metre wide transfer aisle – something
that Norish's management team quickly identified as a waste of
potentially valuable storage space. As a result, a new storage
solution was sought.
Having considered several alternatives, Norish opted for a
system with powered mobile very narrow aisle racking supplied
and installed by Index Procon and served by Flexi articulated
forklift trucks from Narrow Aisle at its heart.
The site's original configuration had provided 4,000 pallet
positions in two frozen chambers operating at -25 deg C. Norish
took the decision to sub-divide one of the chambers – giving
three separate and self contained units in total; one of which
would be operated at chill while the other two would operated
as frozen storage chambers.
With each of the chambers fitted with powered mobile
racking with very narrow aisles and fed by Flexi trucks, the
Gillingham facility now offers 6,200 pallet locations – a 50 per
cent increase pallet capacity. This expansion in available pallet
spaces has been achieved without extending the dimensions of
the building.
"Within any type of cold storage facility it is essential to get
maximum product density," says Norman Hatcliff, managing
director of Norish. "The combination of powered mobile
racking and Flexi trucks allows us to maximise storage density
and get great individual pallet accessibility."
Products arrive at the facility throughout the day and are
unloaded at one of five sealed loading docks by powered pallet
trucks and collated within a marshalling area.
Full pallet loads are then collected by the Flexis and delivered
directly to the mobile racking where they are put away at the
position allocated by Norish's warehouse management system.
The racking is four levels high and the Flexi trucks are lifting to
heights of 8.6 metres at the top beam.
The racking supplied by Index Procon is controlled using
push buttons on the ends of the racks. At the touch of a button,
Norish's cold store staff are able to slide the rack structure along
floor mounted guide rails to expose the required rack face
within the storage cube. This means that at any one time there
are only ever two aisles open from which pallets can be picked.
This maximises the density of storage while retaining individual
pallet access and retrieval.
"Our calculations indicate that a narrow aisle static racking
system served by reach trucks would have given us 5000
1200mm x 1000mm (ISO type) pallet locations," says Hatcliff.
"The flexibility of the Flexi very narrow aisle articulated truck
enables us to make the best use of the storage cube."
The electric-powered Flexi Cold Store (CS) articulated
forklifts in operation at Norish's Gillingham site have been
adapted to suit the cold store environment in which they work.
For example, because they are spending a significant proportion
of their working day in temperatures of 25 degrees or less and
then transferring to ambient/chill zones, all the main
components of the trucks are zinc coated and all other parts
cold store specified.
At present some 600 to 800 pallets pass through the
Gillingham site each 6 days on a single day shift basis, while in
the run-up to Christmas the two Flexi CS articulated trucks on
site were able to cope when this figure rose to 1200 plus pallets
in and out.
Despite the general mood, Hatcliff is optimistic: "In the
current climate it is essential that logistics service providers
manage costs efficiently and the innovations we have introduced
at our Gillingham facility mean we are making the most cost
effective use of the space we have available. After all, the more
pallets I can get into my warehouse the lower my operating and
energy cost and the more
revenue Norish can earn." More articles from Narrow Aisle Flexi: | 
