Flexi Narrow Aisle articulated trucks gear pallet wrapping firm for better fulfillment

Golden Valley is a specialist provider of hand- and machineapplied pallet wrapping film. The company has more than doubled its turnover every year since launching and Chairman Colin Griffiths is optimistic that this impressive growth rate can be maintained.

According to Griffiths, Golden Valley's success can be attributed in part to the company's policy of promising next day delivery to customers in an industry where long lead times had become the accepted norm.

To ensure that the company is always in a position to meet its order fulfilment pledge, Golden Valley relies on a robust supply chain model. Some £1.5m of stock is stored at the company's Stonehouse warehouse unit with film deliveries arriving from suppliers around the world on a daily basis.

Such has been Golden Valley's success that the company's warehouse was soon approaching capacity. After extensive consultation, Golden Valley elected to make optimum use of the existing facility by developing with Flexi Narrow Aisle a very narrow aisle aisle (VNA) storage scheme.

Before the switch to Flexi articulated truck technology, Golden Valley's aisles had been set at 3.1 metres wide and pallet loads of film had been put away and retrieved using a reach truck. 3.1 metres was the narrowest aisle width that the reach truck could safely operate within.

Flexi Narrow Aisle's warehouse planning team were able to demonstrate that, by replacing the reach truck with a Flexi,VNA Golden Valley would be able to reduce the aisles to 1.8 metres wide.

The move has enabled Golden Valley to add extra runs of racking, which has increased pallet capacity by some 25 per cent. The racking design allows pallets to be stored on seven levels - the highest of which is 9 metres. In addition, an area of the warehouse has been dedicated to block stacking.

The pallet put-away and picking within the racking and the block storage area is undertaken by the Flexi VNA truck while the unloading and loading trailers in the yard is shared between the Flexi and another truck.