Hi-tech warehouse achieves optimum vehicle turnaround

THERE HAS been high demand in the past year from the industrial and manufacturing sectors, according to Rob Lovemore, joint-MD with his brother Bruce of freight and warehousing specialists Lovemore Bros. This in turn, he told FTW, has generated extra demand for storage and road distribution. The company is targeting a growth of some 20% this year, following 20% growth in 2006, 33% in 2005 and 19% in 2004. A large part of the market growth for Lovemore Bros in the last year has come from a R13-million investment in a highly-mechanised storage and distribution complex – opened last August. It was specially designed to match the demands of the road transport industry with a yard space large enough for manoeuvring truck rigs up to interlink specification, and fully-covered loading areas. Another of the designer’s instructions was to develop a warehousing complex that was fully-equipped to costefficiently handle a complete range of services including storage, machine packing, crating and distribution. “The essential thing about successfully servicing the road transport industry is that you must achieve optimum turnaround time for each vehicle,” said Lovemore. “Our whole complex is designed for fluid movement of all incoming and outgoing traffic.” The five warehouse halls total 9 000m2 under-roof, servicing 13 loading bays. Each hall is rigged with a 10-ton gantry, and one is designed for extra high, heavy lifts, and has a 15-m clearance under a 35-ton gantry. Every hall is an autonomous operating-unit with its own supervisor, rigging crew, rigging gear, forklift and a loading dock. And each has its own electronic monitoring – with video cameras to record all activities, and a software system to record and track each transaction.