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Introducing Our

Warehouse Storage Solutions

About Warehouse Storage

The efficiency of warehouse storage has become paramount in modern warehouses. Effective storage solutions like shelving, pallet racking, and live storage systems are key to maximising efficiency and space. Shelving systems offer unparalleled versatility, perfect for a myriad of items, from small components to bulky goods, ensuring easy access and superb organisation. Pallet racking stands as a titan of warehouse storage, adeptly handling heavy loads while providing excellent space utilisation. It’s the backbone of many warehouses, supporting large-scale storage needs with ease.

Carton live storage brings a dynamic edge to warehouse storage. With its gravity-fed rollers, items move smoothly towards the picking face, ensuring a first-in, first-out (FIFO) order, which is ideal for perishable goods or fast-moving stock. Pallet live storage operates on a similar principle, but on a larger scale, handling palletised goods with the same efficiency and ease of access.

Incorporating these storage systems into your warehouse design can dramatically enhance your storage capacity and operational efficiency, making them indispensable in modern warehouse infrastructure.

Our warehouse storage types:

Pallet Racking

This system is essential for warehouses handling large volumes of palletised goods. It’s highly customisable, allowing for different pallet sizes and weights. The design promotes efficient use of vertical space, making it ideal for bulk storage. Pallet racking enhances accessibility and product rotation, and it’s adaptable to various warehouse layouts. Its robustness and versatility make it suitable for industries ranging from retail to manufacturing, accommodating both light and heavy pallets.

Shelving

Shelving systems are perfect for storing smaller items. They provide excellent visibility and easy access, making inventory management smoother. This type of storage is highly adaptable, with options for adjustable shelving to accommodate different product sizes. It’s ideal for hand-picked items and is commonly used in environments like retail, offices, and parts warehouses. Shelving systems can be standalone or integrated within larger storage solutions, offering flexibility in design and function.

Vertical Storage Machines

Automated vertical storage machines, are advanced solutions for space and time efficiency. They are ideal for high-density storage and quick retrieval of items. Vertical systems maximise vertical space, and are suitable for faster picking processes and are ideal for small parts. These systems are typically computer-controlled, ensuring precise and quick access to items, and are ideal for industries where space is at a premium and inventory management is crucial.

Cantilever Racking

Designed specifically for storing long, bulky, or oddly-shaped items such as timber, pipes, or sheets. Cantilever racks offer unobstructed storage space, making it easier to load and unload items with forklifts or other machinery. The adjustable arms accommodate various sizes, ensuring versatile and efficient use of space. This type of racking is particularly popular in construction and manufacturing sectors for its ability to handle heavy and large items securely.

Workspace Optimisation

This approach focuses on improving the efficiency and functionality of the entire warehouse. It involves strategically designing the layout to streamline processes like picking, packing, and shipping. Effective workspace optimisation can significantly enhance productivity, reduce operational costs, and improve safety. This holistic solution often includes a combination of various storage systems, tailored to the specific needs of the warehouse, for example, bespoke packing bench design

Accessories

A wide range of accessories are available to enhance the functionality and safety of warehouse storage systems. These include safety barriers, guards, and signage to prevent accidents. Other accessories like labelling systems, bins, and dividers help in better organisation and quicker identification of items. These additions play a crucial role in maintaining an orderly, safe, and efficient storage environment.

Market Sectors

Warehouse Automation

Warehouse automation is the application of computer software and/or automated machinery to improve the efficiency of logistics operations. Typically, this refers to operations within a warehouse or distribution center, automating tasks such as inventory and stock management, put away, picking, packing, transport of product on a warehouse roller conveyor systems, and sortation. The term intralogistics is commonly used when referring to solutions for the warehouse industry, and the term defines the marriage of software systems to physical automated machinery, allowing businesses to control the physical flow of product around their operations using high level software applications, which provides tracking and status information at all stages of their operations. Intralogistics solutions allow businesses to gain real-time productivity data for their operations, allowing them to identify bottlenecks and problem areas, and collect data about their operation so on-the-spot decisions can be made about stock holding, labour resource, etc. Data can be collected about their operations, so forecasts can be produced for future planning, which is a very powerful tool in a modern warehouse operation.   

Warehouse automation systems are comprised of a variety of hardware and software components, some examples of these are as follows:

Automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS), including pallet cranes, miniload cranes, shuttles, and autonomous mobile robots (AMR). These technologies service a rack(s) of storage locations, allowing many levels of stock to be stacked vertically, and allowing for high storage densities of product, which is automatically stored into and retrieved from the racking when the product is required to be picked. ASRS technologies remove the need for human operators to physically travel to stock holding locations, once picked conveyor systems will then transport the tote, box or pallet of product to an operator for picking, and in the case of AMR systems, the complete rack or pallet of product is brought by the robot to the operator for picking.

Conveyor systems enable the automated movement of products around a warehouse, removing the need for operators to physically move product between locations, which is a non-value adding activity. Containers can enter automated conveyors in one area of the warehouse and, either through hard-coded rules or data input, be moved to a selected destination.

Vertical carousels and lift storage systems are based on paternoster lift or vertical carriage lift technology, allowing for high density vertical storage of small to medium product sizes. This technology is similar to vending machines, but on a larger scale, and can provide a cost-effective solution for the automated storage and retrieval of stock in a warehouse or factory.

Sortation systems enable the sortation of stock items or complete order parcels. Sortation systems are available in a wide variety of hardware options, depending on budget, throughput, and number of sort destination requirements.  Automated sortation removes the need for manual operator sortation, massively reducing sort errors through human decision making. Sortation using autonomous mobile robots (AMR), provides a robust system compared with traditional fixed infrastructure type sorters, removing the single point of failure, and providing flexibility and almost infinite expansion possibilities.

Industrial and collaborative robots, typically four and six-axis designs, are used for palletising, de-palletising, packing, and order picking.

Factory Automation

Factory automation is the process of incorporating automated machinery into the manufacturing process of components and products. With automated systems in place, manufacturing businesses have the ability to manufacture and assemble goods without the need for an excessively large human workforce, which could prevent businesses from making profit. The aim of factory automation is to decrease risks associated with laborious and dangerous work faced by human operators, the main advantages of adopting factory belt conveyor systems for factory processes are as follows:

  • Remove human operators from dangerous environments
  • Remove tasks from human operators, which involve monotonous or hard physical work
  • Improve process accuracy
  • Increase process throughput and cycle time
  • Reduce operating costs
  • Increase process resilience


Automated systems in manufacturing environments generally fall into three categories, integrated production lines, robotic systems, and special purpose machines.

Integrated production lines are the most common solution seen in manufacturing environments, these lines are typically adopted to perform a specific set of functions in a process in a specific order, such as bottling lines in a drinks manufacturing environment. Each process stage in the manufacture of a specific product is automated in a linear flow layout, taking raw materials or components and bringing them together to form the finished product.

Robotic systems are common in modern manufacturing environments, their functions can be used to perform a variety of tasks, and due to their flexibility in operation, they can be used for bespoke applications where speed, accuracy, and repeatability is required. Most commonly however, industrial and collaborative robots are used in the following applications:

  • Case packing
  • Palletising and de-palletising
  • Assembly
  • Parts manufacturing
  • Machine tending
  • Welding


Special purpose machines as the name suggests, are machines designed and developed to perform a specific function in a manufacturing operation. The function that requires automating is often very unique, and so “off the shelf” automated machines and solutions are not readily available, and so a machine needs to be developed specifically for that purpose.

Unleash the potential of your business with North Conveyors’ warehouse storage solutions – your gateway to a safer, more efficient, and cost-effective working environment.
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