A major distribution company chose STORAX mobile pallet racking as the optimum storage media for their distribution centre in Hoogeveen, North Holland. This company has STORAX installed in their stores all over the Europe with Hoogeveen being the latest and most sophisticated.

The company needed to give a top quality distribution and storage service, and to meet these high service standards, they had to select reliable suppliers of sophisticated and efficient equipment. For these reasons, they once again chose STORAX mobile racking. STORAX equipment has an excellent record within the group, and is used in around 30 of their installations in Europe. This ongoing relationship has been proved in competition against other European storage system manufacturers.

STORAX is a UK product designed and manufactured by Storax Racking Systems based at Bromsgrove and exported throughout the world. To cope with the competitive environment of increasing pallet weights, pallet movements and reduction of maintenance times, Storax Racking Systems have developed products to suit the most demanding conditions. As part of this development large scale stress/performance testing has been carried out in real situations in cold stores, using sophisticated monitoring equipment. Several of these tests were carried out at the Distribution company's other STORAX installations. The data from these tests along with Storax Racking Systems' wide expertise helped to produce designs for the future.

The Site Manager at Hoogeveen told us "After 24 months of operation we could see the benefits of the system:-

• Improved space utilisation
• Improved pallet handling productivity

Since the start of the operation, the system has been 100% reliable and gives us complete satisfaction, that is why in 1994 we increased capacity by 41%". The complete store is controlled by a real time computer system which gives instructions to STORAX by direct link and to the fork trucks via radio data terminal.

Pallet loads arrive from all over Europe. They are checked and transferred into the store by conveyor with built in weighing equipment. On arrival at the epicentre of the store they are collected by the radio controlled fork trucks which transfer them to the most appropriate storage position.

On receipt of a batch of orders from clients the warehouse computer decides which pallets are to be withdrawn and instructs by radio the fork trucks appropriately. The trucks then deposit pallets on despatch conveyors. As many orders are made up from a mixture of products, the computer produces picking lists for the picking platforms and again on line instructs the fork trucks to withdraw pallets from the bulk store into the picking area just in time.

This method of working leads to: very high efficiencies for the system; fast product movement; minimum product handling; total random access; guaranteed FIFO; flexibility of operation; minimum capital investment. Refinements such as heated cabs and operator friendly safety systems lead to operator satisfaction in this arduous environment at -30ºC.