Luscombe Drinks has been making organic drinks on its farm in Devon for over 20 years and its products are supplied to high end sales points across the country. The company recently built a new warehouse to avoid the costs of outsourcing pallets and has taken delivery of an Aisle-Master articulated forklift which works in the very narrow aisles of racking.
“Our previous on-site storage system was based around a counterbalance truck, with inside and outside areas with 3 m aisles. We were also paying for external storage of 600 pallets and transportation, so it made sense to build our own storage facility,” said Operations Manager Tim Wigley.
“I initially thought of VNA man-up or reach trucks, but the Aisle-Master’s VNA capability has enabled us to increase capacity by a third compared to these. By setting aisle-widths at just 1900 mm rack to rack we have accommodated 1,390 pallets in 1225m² and have exploited all vertical space too: the 2t capacity of the 20SHE Aisle-Master model copes easily with lifting 1t pallets to the top beam height of 7.65m. The truck’s ability to work inside and out and to offload also enables streamlined transportation of bottled juice to the warehouse.”
“Return on investment for the contract hire package will be rapid, around one year”, said Tim. “Having the Aisle-Master in place has also opened our eyes to other possibilities. Outsourcing cold storage is even more expensive than ambient, so the next stage will be to build our own and get a second Aisle-Master with a cold store spec.”
