Goods lift doubles capacity

A clinical waste management company has doubled its storage capacity after a call for help was answered by Greenbank.

The Middlesbrough-based waste management company designed a solution to SRCL's problem of safely getting bins onto its mezzanine floor.

Installed 18 months earlier, it had been taking three men to move two bins at a time into the newly-created storage area - one to load them onto a fork lift truck, one to operate the vehicle and one to unload the bins onto the higher floor.

Now, thanks to a special goods lift system devised by Greenbank, just one man can transfer six bins at once.

Steve Simms, general manager at SRCL's Bridgend site, said the goods lift had had a huge impact on the way they operated, especially as two of that three-man team were now back doing the work they were taken on to do in the first place - washing more bins, loading the content onto trailers and all the related administration.

"We had spent money on the mezzanine floor and then found that we couldn't fully utilise it. Now though we have been able to almost double our storage capacity from 400 bins to nearly 800," he explained.

"The goods lift is much better from a health and safety point of view; it also speeds up the job. Furthermore, using the forklift involved operating with the shutter door open which contributed to heat loss from the building. Now that the doors are closed this helps keep our employees warm, and reduces heating costs." SRCL's Bridgend site deals with medical waste from the South Wales as well as the South West of England from Bristol and Gloucestershire.

Greenbank has also installed a goods lift system at one of SRCL's other sites in Oldham.

Greenbank's managing director Duncan Evershed said the goods lift system was unique to SRCL in that it resolved their specific issues but there was no reason why a similar system could not be explored for other clients.