Rapid expansion.

Back in 1996, Delbanco Meyer, a leading supplier of household textiles and brush materials, built a new distribution centre, adjacent to the A1M, at Stevenage. A Redirack narrow aisle racking scheme was installed. The story was featured in a previous edition of RackIt (RackIt 16). The rapid expansion of the company’s business has created the need to extend the site.

Kieron Dunne is Delbanco Meyer’s Logistics Director. He explains. "Turnover has almost doubled in the last four years, due to an increasing demand for our products from a number of well known High Street retailers. We needed to expand our storage and distribution facilities to cope with the extra demand."

The new 31,000 square foot extension was completed in December 2000. New racking was installed in two phases, the second being finished in June. In total an extra 6214 pallet locations have been created, doubling storage capacity at the distribution centre. Once again, Redirack were awarded the contract to supply the racking. Kieron Dunne comments. "Our original system has worked well and we felt that keeping commonality in the extension was important for our workers. We have developed a very good business relationship with Redirack and we have found their product to be excellent. They were also able to meet the extremely tight installation deadlines on both phases of the project."

The new racking scheme is almost a mirror image of the original layout. The new narrow aisle storage system rises to over thirteen metres with a top beam level of 11.6 metres. In total there are seven beam levels in each bay. The bays have a clear entry of 2625mm and are designed to accommodate two 1200 x 1000mm four way pallets stored 1000 deep into the racking. Pallets in the bottom bays sit on the floor. The racking is laid out with seven double and two single runs, each comprising of twenty-six bays. Cantilever P&Ds complete the installation.

The racking is serviced by man up stacker trucks, which are wire guided in the aisles. Each rack frame is fitted with a sacrificial leg, a feature, which has proved of enormous value to Delbanco Meyer. Kieron Dunne confirms his satisfaction. "With such narrow aisles, damage to the racking uprights is unavoidable. The sacrificial leg is a brilliant solution. Redirack have trained our maintenance staff to change the leg and we have invested in the special frame support jack. We can repair damaged legs in a matter of minutes, without having to call for a Redirack service engineer. This has, undoubtedly, saved us a lot of time and money."