As winter turned to spring in 2015, Uli Smidt, Managing Director of Chill Out Logistics in Ottery, Cape Town, realised that his existing freezer store would no longer be adequate to cope with the expanding levels of business being experienced, and expected in future.
As distributors for OLA ice-cream products (Unilever SA), King Pie, Ma Baker Pies and Artisan Breads in the southern CT region Uli needs to hold considerable stock of the product to cope with growing demand, and he took the bold decision to build a new freezer to expand his capacity. A brand new warehouse was built by GLENKEY Development and Construction on the adjacent site, with an insulated ‘box’ inside the structure, together with a new insulated and reinforced floor and the relevant refrigeration plant.
The downside, of course, was that the size of the store would be limited in terms of both area and height by the constraints of the site, which in turn would limit the ultimate capacity of the store.
A logical solution was to consider Storax mobile racking which would enable nearly double the number of pallets to be accommodated in the given area compared with conventional racking.
Layouts, proposals, and quotations were submitted and discussed, and eventually Uli decided that, although his ultimate need might be for the maximum capacity offered by mobile racking – nearly 600 pallets – his initial need would be for only half that. So with respect to budget constraints it was decided that the rails should be laid in the floor ready for future expansion by the addition of mobile bases, but that only ordinary fixed racks would be installed initially.
Construction of the building commenced prior to Christmas shut-down, and started up again early in the New Year, and Barpro were all set to install the rails into the new floor as it was engineered (by Mike Hurworth and Associates). However, by this time new business projections were indicating that the entire store would be filled to capacity almost immediately, even when complete with mobiles, and Chill Out Logistics instructed Barpro to undertake the entire project complete with the addition of the bases.
The expanded capacity also enables Uli to offer frozen storage facilities to other local food manufacturers, in addition to accommodating his own products.
This additional supply and work was fairly short-notice, but the entire project was successfully completed and handed over to a happy customer in May this year.
Contact Barpro Storage SA to optimise your warehouse space!
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