Link 51 has completed a pallet racking storage installation for diesel engine manufacturer Perkins.
A series of three adjacent warehouses at Peterborough now form a centralised facility for Perkins – the result of a project that has seen a number of individual satellite storage operations brought onto a single site.
“Up to 6,000 completed engines can now be stored in the one location alongside supplies of some 3,000 individual parts destined for global manufacturing use,” said a Perkins spokesman. “The centre therefore meets both our outbound despatch needs and acts as a global distribution hub – the latter feeding outlets worldwide, including the USA, China and Brazil.”
Much of the completed engine facility stores units destined for use by Caterpillar – the centralised warehouse operation is managed by Caterpillar Logistics. However the site is also dedicated to storage and distribution for many other leading names within this specialist sector.
“The racking facility centres on two of the three warehouses at the Peterborough site which are now fully fitted with Link 51 XL racking – both standard and narrow aisle,” said Link 51’s Keith Evans. “The narrow aisle facility is dedicated to the smaller dimensions of Shibaura engines, which are held as boxed units on pallets, with a number of flexi-trucks operating in the back-to-back aisles in this area. The remainder, where larger unit storage – up to 1800 mm wide – and global parts stockholding takes place, is serviced via a series of counterbalance forklift trucks.”
The three warehouses are existing structures now fitted out and adapted by Perkins and allow four levels of racking to be used, making full use of the available roof height. Link 51 installed mesh decks throughout which allow a wide variation of palletised boxed units, metal and wooden stillages and containers and totes containing the range of spares to be accommodated in a choice of locations.
The Perkins spokesman said: “This high degree of storage flexibility in each of the warehouses is important as is the mesh decking which not only permits storage of up to 7.5 tonnes per bay but also negates the need for in-rack sprinklers. The roof-mounted system meets all relevant requirements in this regard.”
