BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR AS/RS
materialhandlingupdate
HighHigh
waterwater
markmark
After months of treading water, German beverage
producer Hassia got back in the swim of things by
adding high-bay storage to its Frankfurt-area DC.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, BUT NO PLACE TO PUT IT ALL.
With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, that was the situation Hassia
found itself in.
Hassia, the fourth-largest beverage manufacturer in Germany, was experiencing some of the symptoms common to fast-growing businesses. As a result
of an increase in both its SKU base and its sales volume, the company, which
distributes premium bottled water as well as juice and soft drinks, found itself
dealing with a serious space crunch at its Bad Vilbel distribution center, a
323,000-square-foot facility near Frankfurt.
Adding to the problem was a surge in consumer demand for one-way bottles, which require more storage space than returnables. “One-way bottles are
made from thinner plastic and do not stack well compared to the crates that
are used for returnable bottles,” explains Stefan Marhold, warehouse manager
at the Bad Vilbel site. “That requires us to move to racking instead of floor
stacking.” One of the company’s chief concerns was that conventional racking
wouldn’t allow for the same storage density that could be achieved with floor
stacking, he adds.
