Excellent service.

In Holland, one of Redirack's biggest customers is Exel, one of the world's largest dedicated supply chain companies, employing more than fifty thousand people in thirteen hundred locations worldwide. The Dutch sites, previously owned by MSAS, became part of the Exel organisation following the merger between the two companies in 2000. MSAS was already a worldwide organisation providing tailored integrated warehousing and distribution solutions. Exel operates from six sites in Holland, four of which, at Veghel, Amsterdam, Amersfoort and Nijmegen are equipped with Redirack pallet racking. Support is provided from Redirack's Dutch office, based at Zouterwoude, in the suburbs of Amsterdam. Redirack has also supplied pallet racking to Exel's Belgian site at Mechelen.

The Nijmegen site was originally built as the worldwide distribution centre for a large American manufacturer of pharmaceutical and healthcare products. Opened in 1997, the facility provides centralized storage and bulk shipments to several smaller regional distribution centres. It also performs a pick and pack operation for end users in Benelux and Scandinavia. The original development consisted of two high bay storage areas, giving 5,600 square metres of narrow aisle racking, a 2,500 square metres picking bay and a 1,400 square metre despatch bay.

Within twelve months, the site needed to be expanded to provide extra storage space. Jan Kuijt, the Location Support Manager at Nijmegen, explains. "The warehouse was built to cope with the needs of the pharmaceutical industry. Our expertise in providing a specialist outsourced logistics service to this industry sector attracted several new customers. In addition to our first customer, we are now the central European storage, order picking and distribution centre for an American dental supplies company. We have to fulfill their guaranteed twenty-four hour delivery promise to most parts of Europe."

The extension, which was completed in November 2000, provides an additional high bay warehouse and a specialist fifteen hundred pallet hazardous goods store. The air in the hazardous area is refreshed four times per hour due to the flammable and potentially harmful nature of the products stored.

Redirack Holland was chosen to supply the pallet racking for the new extension. Commenting on this decision, Jan Kuijt says. " We have always had a good relationship with Redirack. They provide an extremely good product and have always given us excellent advice. They continue to develop solutions, which show a real understanding of our specific requirements." He continues. "For example, they developed the "T-bone support arrangement at the end of each double run of racking. This enables the first ground floor bay of each run to be used as a pick and drop point, without seriously reducing storage space. This means that we can use standard pallet trucks to move loads between the high bays and the despatch area."

Within the new storage area, each of the twenty runs of racking comprises eighteen double bays, with five beam levels per bay. As the top beams are more than eleven metres high, the racking is serviced by man-rising narrow aisle pallet stackers. The trucks are wire guided, which means that pallets in the bottom locations can be placed directly on the floor. To complete the installation, a high level conveyor has been fitted, running the full width of the high bay. This allows the stacker trucks to move full pallets to the adjacent three level picking and packing area without the need to double handle the loads.

Jan Kuijt was extremely pleased with the result. " Redirack completed the delivery and installation within the agreed schedule and without any major problems." The new extension brings the overall storage capacity at Nijmegen to more than twenty three thousand pallet locations. The site is now able to process more than twenty thousand customer orders every month. In confirming the success of the Nijmegen site, Jan Kuijt concludes. "I expect that the racking in the new extension will be full by the end of this year. Then we will need to think again. No doubt, Redirack will be involved, when further expansion becomes inevitable."