The Norish shared user multi temperature controlled site, located in Brierley Hill, West Midlands has completed an extensive 6 month project, where almost 60% of the racking has been replaced, without any disruption to their many customers.

This ambitious £270k project was undertaken to replace all of the deep drive in and sections of the mobile racking, in favour of 1.9 m narrow aisle racking, operated with a new fleet of Flexi Trucks. Norish’s Managing Director Norman Hatcliff said “whilst the old racking maximised the cubic space available for storing frozen and chilled product, we identified that changes in customer’s supply chains would require fast and easier access to individual pallets. We therefore took the decision to install the narrow aisle racking, which provided the most cost effective and pallet accessible solution.”

The time taken from the initial concept to completion was impressive, especially when considering that the work took place in temperatures of minus 23 degrees and with a wind chill factor bringing temperatures down to minus 30. Over a period of 5 months, in excess of 7,700 racking spaces were removed and replaced with new racking.

Norish Site Manager; Simon Abbott said “Even the removal of the old racking took considerable pre-planning as this generated the need to download and then dismantle in excess of 150 tonnes of racking that had to be taken out of the cold store without any disruption to the complex 24/5 operation at the West Midlands site.

Norish has previously worked with Index Procon Ltd during 2005 to install similar racking at its York ambient site, which brought its total pallet capacity up to 15,500 spaces. The Flexi Trucks supplied by Narrow Aisle Ltd have proven themselves to be both reliable and adaptable to work in such confined spaces.

Norish Limited is a third party multi-temperature warehousing and logistics business providing services to importers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and distributors.

Founded in 1975 and a public company since 1986, with its shares listed on the AIM market the business operates from 6 strategically located sites and provides in excess of 65,000 racked pallet spaces, of which 50,000 are temperature controlled.