Statistics show that more and more breweries are popping up across the UK. During early 2021, there were more than 3,000 different breweries countrywide. Therefore, there is certainly a growing need for specialist cask racking and raw material storage racks across the UK’s brewery warehouses.
As specialist racking and shelving designers and installers, Prodek are on hand to support any bespoke brewery storage need. If you are running your own brewery in-house, you will likely already know that clear, simple access to barrel storage, bottle racking and raw materials is essential.
Is your existing brewery storage facility already doing enough for your team? Let’s consider a few essential features and facets of an efficient, scalable brewery warehouse.
HEAVY-DUTY RACKING FOR RAW MATERIAL STORAGE
Appropriate raw material storage is crucial to ensure a brewery keeps up with the pace of fermenting beer and industry demand. Specific shelving is required for grain and hops, and more so, racking must be heavy-duty and robust enough to safely hold and store kegs, bottle pallets and more.
Cask racking must not only be strong enough to hold full barrels of product, but must also be accessible for regular use, and maintained at specific temperatures. Bespoke, heavy-duty racking design will ensure that heavier, raw brewing materials and goods are safe to pick, remove and replace with adherence to manual handling guidelines.
For example, it may initially seem efficient to stack barrels. However, in a growing, fast-paced environment such as a brewery store, the need for space-efficient and wide-access racking is crucial. Prodek will install racking that not only holds heavy supplies, but which is flexible around your brewing activities, and actually improves operations.
PALLET RACKING FOR BOTTLES AND CANS
Canned and bottled beverages also require safe, appropriate shelving solutions, maintained at specific temperatures. Beverage containers, designed for the end-user, can be damaged in transit or when improperly stored and moved. Therefore, specialist pallet racking will ensure stocks are not written off as damaged, or rejected by the shop, bar, or pub.
Scalable warehouse shelving, designed and installed by Prodek, will help to ensure your warehouse has the space to produce and store more finished product. As your business grows, and demand fluctuates, you need a scalable warehouse to ensure you can continue fulfilling expectations without encountering disruptive bottlenecks. In time, this increased efficiency will help to boost revenue, too.
WAREHOUSE SHELVING FOR SMALL PARTS STORAGE
Dedicated warehouse shelving is an ideal solution for small parts and accessories crucial in the brewing process. Brewers will need access to equipment throughout their working day, therefore, it pays to fully optimise the storage of essential equipment.
Storing or mixing small-scale items in with cask racking will, ultimately, lead to slower rotation and processing. By defining warehouse shelving, separate from your raw materials, is another part in the process of improving processes for ultimate efficiency in a brewery.
BARREL RACKING SYSTEMS ENHANCE STOCK MANAGEMENT
Overhauling the layout and space of your brewery warehouse can, ultimately, enhance the speed and accuracy of your stock handling and management. What’s more, with easier, safer access to raw materials and finished products, you can ensure stock rotation is seamless. As a result, you have additional time and space to support growing demand.
Barrel racking systems designed and installed by space planning experts, like Prodek, can help transform how space is utilised within your brewery. From an initial consultation with a site engineer, Prodek will work to understand the needs of your business now and in the future. From here, our design team will develop a proposal, with CAD layouts to assist.
Rest assured, it’s important to us that we help to find you a practical, scalable solution to your ongoing storage demands.
HOW CASK RACKING INSPECTIONS CAN HELP
Prodek also recommends undertaking regular racking inspections. A legal obligation for any warehouse with racking, under the ‘Provision and Use of Workplace Equipment Regulations’ (PUWER) and ‘The Health & Safety at Work Act 1974’ racking inspections must be carried out every 12 months by a qualified inspector.
Prodek’s in-house racking inspectors will help analyse the safety, practicality, and accessibility of your brewery shelving. We will also be on hand to analyse your existing racking as part of an initial consultation.
EXTEND YOUR SPACE WITH MEZZANINES
Of course, once your brewery expands beyond your warehouse capacity, extending space becomes a necessity. However, there is not always the need to move to a new site or location purely to extend your raw material storage racks.
In larger brewery warehouses where there is an abundance of unused vertical space, Prodek recommends installing a mezzanine floor. Mezzanine flooring offers an additional floor on an upper level for further beer keg storage racks, heavy-duty racking and more as required. If space permits, a two-tier mezzanine could be perfect solution to finding that extra storage space.
Breweries are growing very quickly across the UK – now is the time to take advantage of an increasing thirst for home-brewed beer. If you’d like to know more about enhancing or upgrading your brewery cask racking and raw material storage racks, contact Prodek for a free consultation.
