Pile Driver

Landsdon Limited was established in 1992. Over the past decade it has grown into the UK’s largest independent supplier of floor covering products - stocking and distributing products from Europe’s leading manufacturers, as well as its own domestic and contract floor covering brands. The Group’s turnover is in excess of £70 million.

In December 2006, the company's central distribution and logistics facility completed a move to purpose built premises in Redditch. The 100,000 sq ft warehouse has capacity for over 1 million square metres of carpet and ½ million square metres of carpet tiles – three times the capacity of the company’s previous facility. The new building houses Landsdon’s administration centre and the central distribution operation.

The group boasts a delivery fleet of over 70 vehicles that deliver next day to all parts of the UK. With a huge range of stocked items, orders are fulfilled immediately.

When it came to fitting out the new warehouse Landsdon chose Redirack. Mark Jones, Commercial Manager explains; "We hadn't used Redirack before but they presented us with a design that made the best use of our available space." Two different storage systems were installed: One very narrow aisle system to store boxed and palletised floor coverings and accessories. The other, special carpet storage rack configured to store rolls of carpet up to 5 metres wide.

The VNA system is at one end of the warehouse and comprises twelve double runs of racking rising to over ten metres in places. Following the contours of the roof the scheme has six or seven beam levels per bay and cantilever P&Ds which are wooden decked to cater for all the different types of products stored. The scheme is worked by wire guided narrow aisle trucks. In total the very narrow aisle system can store 4300 pallets.

Rolls of carpet are stored in specially configured racking based on the width of the carpet. Landsdon have six blocks of racking to store rolls that are three, four and five metres wide. Each block of racking rises over ten metres and is decked out so that the roll of carpet is supported across its width.

Standard frames are used, but they are spaced to enable carpet rolls to be stored end inwards. For example, the racking system that stores five metre rolls utilises three frames across its width fixed at 1950mm centres. Regular beams are used and when decked provide a 4800mm deep storage facility. With the bays being 3600mm wide seven or eight rolls can be stored at each beam level. As is usual for a carpet warehouse, trucks with special carpet beams load and unload the rack.

Mark Jones was really happy with the way everything went, "Redirack were excellent. Everything went to plan and they were very good, even when design changes were made as the project progressed." Good to hear we didn't get under their feet!