Brierley Hill, UK: Norish, has introduced lithium-ion battery-powered Flexi articulated very narrow aisle truck technology at its Brierley Hill coldstore.
The company, which has used Flexi very narrow aisle trucks throughout its business for some 15 years, opted to replace the lead-acid battery-driven Flexis with new models from the Flexi Lithion range.
Flexi Lithion’s lithium-ion power system requires no maintenance and or battery changing to deliver extended multi-shift availability which suits temperature-controlled stores.
A key benefit of lithium-ion technology for Norish is the fact that the machines do not require battery changes – the lithium-ion power source is recharged while the operator is taking a regular break from the coldstore.
This increases truck uptime and reduces the requirement for Norish to allocate floor space to a dedicated spare battery charging and changing bay.
The Flexi Lithio monitors the battery function constantly and reports the battery status in real time, while water topping-up is not required, which means that the type of health and safety issues that can arise if liquids are spilt during the traditional lead-acid battery charging process, are eliminated.
State of the art collaborative robotic – or ‘cobotic’ - digital technology controls all of the Flexi Lithio’s drive, hydraulic and power-steering functions and ensures that the trucks are able to perform at full power across multi-shifts at Norish’s Brierley Hill store.
The Flexi Lithio’s combination of fully integrated ‘cobotic’ digital motor technology and lithium-ion power is so effective when it comes to eliminating wasted power, that truck availability is typically increased by 25% every day, Narrow Aisle says.
Delivery vehicles containing a wide mix of meats, sea food and raw ingredients from the UK and around the world arrive at Norish’s Brierley Hill site throughout the day and are unloaded within sealed loading docks by powered pallet trucks before being collated within a marshaling area.
Full pallet loads are then collected by the Flexi trucks and delivered directly to the allocated cold store chamber where they are put away within a high-density very narrow aisle pallet rack system.
The pallet racking is controlled using a warehouse management system that provides pre-allocated locations for every product received at the store and also directs newly arrived chilled materials to one of the three ‘blast freeze’ zones in the store.
“Within any type of cold storage facility, it is essential to get maximum product density: the more pallets we can get into the warehouse the lower our operating and energy costs are,” says Stewart Lloyd, national engineering director at Norish. “The combination of high density VNA [very narrow aisle] pallet racks and Flexi Lithion trucks allows us to maximise storage density and get great individual pallet accessibility,” he said.
John Maguire, managing director, Narrow Aisle, said: “Cold storage is one of the most demanding applications for materials handling equipment and Norish has deployed Flexi articulated forklift truck technology across its various business units for many years.
“The benefits of lithium-ion battery technology for trucks operating within cold stores and the advanced ultra-reliable digital drive technology at the heart of the Flexi Lithion made Norish’s decision to deploy Flexi Lithion trucks at it’s Brierley Hill site an easy one.”
