Marcus RichardsWarehouses and storage facilities offer safe and organized storage for numerous industries. Whether you are a storage facility owner or warehouse in charge, you understand the importance of sturdy and durable shelving to ensure the safe storage of goods.
Metal shelving offers much-needed storage efficiency over other types as many industries require sturdy shelving to store heavy goods. Since they are an essential part of storage facilities, shelvings need to withstand the heavy load and be affordable and long-lasting.
Many buyers often get confused due to the different options available. Therefore here are five factors that you need to consider when purchasing metal shelvings.
Used vs. New
Many storage facility owners and operators often find themselves in a dilemma of whether to buy new shelvings or used ones. Though you might get tempted to purchase brand new products, spending so much money on new shelvings wouldn’t make sense, especially when you can easily find used ones that are in perfect condition.
As mentioned earlier, shelves are made from heavy-duty metals like durable steel that can withstand heavy loads. That means even the used ones will last for years without any damage.
Load capacity
The primary purpose of shelvings is to store goods effectively without any damage. You don’t want your products to drop to the floor and get damaged due to poor shelving. It would significantly increase the operational cost and cause delays in the shipping process.
Therefore you must check the weight load capacity to ensure the shelves can hold heavy loads. It’s also essential to purchase shelves with higher load capacity, so you can rest assured that any items you put up there will be safe and secure.
The inventories often stay stacked for several months, which can put additional pressure on the shelves. Therefore, you must purchase shelves that won’t bend or break with prolonged pressure.
Quantity
Storage facilities and warehouses are often spread across several thousand meters and can store hundreds of thousands of products. In fact, did you know Amazon’s fulfillment facilities cover more than 525 million square feet across all the facilities?
With such massive warehousing spaces, you can imagine how many shelves each warehouse would require. Though you may not require as much storage space as Amazon, you should nonetheless have a clear idea of how many shelves you will need to effectively manage your storage facility or warehouse without the scarcity of storage space.
You can do an audit or report studies to deduce how many shelves you will need.
Dimensions
It’s critical to know the dimensions of the shelves. Knowing the dimensions of individual packages can help determine the requirements for a total number of shelves.
Depending on the average sizes of your packages can help you determine the right height and width for your shelves. You can also adjust height and width as most shelvings come with adjustable nut-bold mechanisms to increase or decrease the size according to convenience.
Closed / Open shelving
Depending on the type of products you store in your facility, you need to decide whether you need open or closed shelves. Closed shelves are enclosed with durable metal sheets. The enclosed metal shelving helps protect the product from light so the colors won’t fade away. It will reduce the number of product replacements as they stay in their original condition for extended periods.
The efficiency of storage facilities and warehouses directly depends on how safely and effectively the products are stored. They must also be easily accessible, so they can be located and transported to the loading bay when the time comes for them to be shipped out.
Therefore it is essential to invest in quality shelvings to ensure the safe and organized storage of the goods.
