Link 51, the pallet racking equipment manufacturer, has completed a large scale installation at TDG’s distribution facility in Trafford Park, which is dedicated to storage and distribution for Kellogg’s.
The three phase racking installation programme at the 310,000 sq ft site provides capacity for the some 58,000 pallets. Some 50 containers arrive and depart each day at the site through 28 dock gates.
The majority of stock is held in double-deep, bulk storage aisles, but Link 51 also fitted a dedicated cart system push back racking at selected lower levels to provide a picking facility.
This sees individual pallets loaded onto a wheel-mounted platform or cart which is then pushed backwards to expose a second loading area underneath. When the front pallet is removed, the rear cart rolls gently forward to the front of the racking.
Glyn Jones, TDG’s project implementation manager, said: “The configuration of the racking design has been central to the installation because it needed to meet Kellogg’s own specific dimensional requirements.
“Because of the relatively low product weights involved, typically 500kg, a Kellogg’s storage unit comprises two stacked pallets, shrink wrapped into a single item and positioned in pairs in each bay. The resultant dimensions had to be accommodated by the spacing between beam levels while the design also incorporates further clearance above each load to provide the versatility to reconfigure the storage profile if required in the future.”
The entire facility is based around 3.3m-wide aisles using Link 51’s XL racking, all of which is fully accessible by TDG’s fleet of reach trucks.
