LPC have a long standing relationship, of over 20 years, with Alf Mizzi (AM), supporting the business over this time with continued development of their site at Zachary House, Marsa in Malta. With continued growth AM had acquired some additional land with a view to moving car parking and some goods vehicle staging off the main distribution site to allow for extensions to the warehousing to take place.
LPC were asked to identify concept designs both for:
- the yard areas including routing and layout of parking, vehicle staging, a vehicle wash,
fuelling and a waste area - potential warehouse layouts for increasing the capacities of the ambient and frozen chambers
The deliverables were to identify the most efficient and safe vehicle routes around and between the sites while allowing vehicle passage between the potential extension of the frozen and ambient chambers. In house vehicle simulation tools were used including the exploration of vehicle turntables to turn vehicles in tight corners of the yard.
The options identified for increasing the capacities for the storage areas included phased implementation of an additional racking level where appropriate, and various options for the use of denser storage media to enable the existing building space to be “sweated” before requiring the building extensions to be built.
The options chosen had not only to fit with the SKU and picking profiles but also to be compatible with the current handling methods and the structure of the floor. The positioning of rack footplates was key to align with the ‘suspended’ floor support beams Options included: double deep racking, “shuttle” racking, pallet live and push back racking. The solution identified as being most suitable and providing the longest design /capacity life before requiring physical footprint expansion and post expansion is to employ an old style push back for euro pallets handled on the 800mm face.
LPC supported AM in the identification of storage suppliers for the procurement of the racking and pallet dynamics.
The addition of one level of racking to some of the existing racks is now progressing and the re-engineering of the remainder of theient chamber is expected later this year.
