Following on from LPC’s Blueprinting design of future depots, SAB had been experiencing widespread growth and had identified that a series of new depots were required in addition to re-engineering some existing depots in order to support the ever growing network.
The first of the new depots was in the East Pretoria region. A site on a defunct farm at Mooiplats was then purchased; in order to accommodate the overspill from the soft drinks production and distribution site at West Pretoria and also the Beer site at Waltloo, where the lease was soon due to expire.
The main challenge on the site design was that the developable area was severely reduced to accommodate “Wet Land”. Further challenges included setting aside an area as a road reserve to allow for potential future dualling of the main road which runs adjacent to the site.
However, planning had to be suspended while further site searches took place and the Blueprint study was revised to accommodate these challenges. The Blueprint principles were then used to produce concept designs for the site on its own and future planning for the inclusion potentially of two additional adjoining sites.
One of the primary objectives of this project was to cater for the growth requirements for Soft Drinks which needed to take into consideration the longer term planning of accommodating Beers onto the site whilst factoring in how the adjacent site would be able to support in the facilitation of the composite development.
This entailed the master planning for a two stage development, which incorporated the Soft Drinks overspill from West Pretoria and secondly, the future construction of the Beers warehouse. During the concept design phase LPC uncovered increased capital costs and issues with power lines which led us to advise that the additional site was not a realistic option for phase 1. Therefore the design was to revert to the original smaller Mooiplats site.
The primary scope now needed to accommodate the entire Phase 1 Soft Drinks requirement. The solution proposed was to be a compromise providing scope for economic development whilst fulfilling the Soft Drinks needs and optimising the remaining space either for the future inclusion of the Beers operation, or to provide an enlarged Soft Drinks facility should the Beers operation remain in-situ.
A detailed concept design for the site master plan and internal layout of the depot were developed using the design principles of the Blueprint in cognisance with determining the Capex and Opex costs.
The flexibility offered in the Blueprint design would inevitably facilitate storage capacity increase in the future with the installation of dense storage media utilising the full height of the warehouse.
