Warehouses

Etlin International visits UK's greatest

Etlin International visits UK’s greatest

I visited, I think the most biggest and impressive temperature controlled warehouses that the UK has to offer.   The first warehouse had a total capacity of 197 000 pallets and increasing. The second site visited holds 41 500 frozen but they have other sites around UK. Third – probably the largest frozen logistics company in UK, capacity of 365 000 pallets across 12 stores. And fourth was 160 000 pallets on the site.   The capacity of these warehouses were the most impressive and the volume that actually gets moved in/out, it was just WOW !!   There were many highlights in visiting these stores such as the energy efficiency initiatives, most the product is handled with ride on pallet jacks instead of forklift trucks as opposed to here in S.A – this is actually a huge mind set change for me, the picking abilities and purpose built infrastructure to handle 1600 sku’s is just mind-blowing. In all the stores the primary mobile equipment supplier is Storax so we were happy to see we are following global industry leaders in this category, very few maintenance or breakdown issues on the system – very similar to what we have here in S.A. A lot of these stores aim to offer a full “cradle to grave” solution which is very convenient to the customer and beneficial to the organization.                       We would also just like to thank Barpro/STORAX for arranging the visit, hosting us and for commuting us around, there was a wealth of information shared which we could probably never place a value on, it was truly a mind blowing trip with just so much of information to absorb and ideas to be transformed, on behalf of Etlin we would just like to convey our heartfelt gratitude for everything.     Christopher Nulliah – Logistics Director   [gravityform id=”10″ title=”true” description=”true”]

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Should water tanks be a compulsory feature at all cold stores and warehouses?

At 54% the Western Cape dam levels are way down on last year. If it doesn’t improve soon there will be problems next summer. Water shortages are something that the Australian cold storage guys have experienced. Their big cold stores all have water tanks, I have seen them at both Oxford and Montague, where they find it profitable to use rain water (suitably treated) in the condensers. One of the tanks pictured below is for the sprinklers and they are not allowed to use this water for anything else, but the others catch rain water off the roof. As far as we know there are no cold stores in SA that do the same thing. With the low rainfalls we are surprised that this has not become a mandatory requirement. If there are any cold stores catching rain water we would be very interested to get more information. Please contact James Cunningham on email james@barpro.co.za  

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