Racking Extension Project at Cytiva

HMF have completed another successful project for Cytiva this time at their Havant site in Hampshire. Other projects recently undertaken have been down in Cornwall.

The project at Havant was a modification of an existing warehouse that HMF had originally built here some years ago.

The work involved extending the existing racking in height to gain valuable additional pallet locations. HMF attended site and worked out how this racking could be extended up from 4.5m to 8.5m. HMF designed the racking extension using 5 hole splices that enabled heavy duty frames to be fitted at the bottom level of the pallet racking and then the existing racking being reused to save Cytiva cost on the top of the end frames.

Due to the height HMF recommended that open boarded wooden decking be provided to enable Cytiva to store differing sizes of palletised and non palletised goods which also gave the additional benefit of making the installation safer when pallets were being put away at 8.5m in height.

A new full height run of racking was fitted complete with an anti-collapse mesh screen to the rear of the racking forming a protective partition to stop any product falling off the racking onto persons behind the rack whilst also forming effectively a mesh partition to segregate the stores off.

HMF designed this rack with the anti-collapse mesh extended in height so that the top pallet on the racking would be protected even when lifted up or down by fork truck into position.

Additional steel partitioning was fitted forming the secure stores which involved very wide doors including a 4.0m wide bi-parting door which Hampshire Mezzanine Floors designed without a top lintel to give Cytiva long term flexibility of bringing high items through this doorway in the future and also allowing future flexibility of fork truck with potentially different height masts.

HMF fitted guide wheels to these doors to assist in the safe longterm operation and ease of usage for Cytiva personnel.

HMF fitted steel column guards to the front of all the pallet racking uprights which were fitted to act as sacrificial guards for any accidental impact by fork lift truck so the column guard would take the force of the impact rather than the racking receiving potential impact damage. These were fitted in high visibility Yellow to give good awareness for the drivers operating within the stores area.

HMF installed the racking using 2no scissor lifts to ensure that the work was carried out safely.

The work was completed ahead of programme and it all went very well.