23 Apr 2019
If you’re in warehousing or storage, you may have heard about long span shelving. What is long span shelving? Long span shelving is like retail shelving for small to medium-sized items with one crucial distinction: it optimises the space in your warehouse to ensure maximum efficiency in terms of cost, access, and customisation. For bulkier items, warehouses can also install heavy-duty longspan shelves – which is also ideal for apparel and retail goods.
What are the advantages to installing long span shelving in your business?
Better uses vertical space
Most long span shelving is made to standardised specifications. This means you can put together a multi-tier storage system of long-span shelves vertically, which makes better use of your warehouse space.
Pictured: Long Span Shelving With Timber Shelves
Customisable and height adjustable
Most long span shelves are easily customised and can adjust for differing height requirements. Frame heights can range from 1500mm to 6000mm and depths from 300mm to 1500mm. Since long span shelving isn’t bolted to frames, your business can adjust the shelves with ease for different types of stock. Some timber shelves use a boltless clip together system for easier use, while others can be adjusted to as fine precision as 50mm increments.
More versatile
Long span shelving is adjustable and load-bearing so it can handle about any type of merchandise or stock you need to store. Your warehouse can adjust on the fly to accommodate new lines or bulkier items.
Allows unobstructed use of walkways
In addition to height adjustment and depending on load requirements, you can also install walkways in your system such as gratings, steel panels, or wooden walkways.
Integration with pallet racks or conveyors
Long span shelving can also be further customised with other picking apparatus such as freight lifts, conveyor systems, or chutes. They can be integrated into your overall pallet racking system as a lower-order order picking and fulfillment area. Or, you can use them as standalone racks for general use.
Pictured: STURGO® Gravity Conveyors
More efficient use of stacking space
Long span shelving uses fewer columns or posts compared to other shelving systems – it can span up to 2.5m in most systems which gives workers easy access to picking goods. As mentioned earlier, you can also adjust the shelf heights and install mezzanine shelves to effectively double your storage capacity.
Comes in a variety of material types
Depending on your needs, long span shelves can be made from steel, melamine, wood, mesh, or other materials. Steel long span shelving is often made of high-tensile 24 gauge steel, making the shelves light yet strong. Some long span shelves can bear loads of up to 1250kg. Long span shelves are not exclusively for warehouses – mine-spec shelves can also be used in mining or industrial applications.
To find out more about long span shelving or to see our range of cost-effective and space saving shelves, contact Backsafe Australia today on 1300 305 314.
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