Hemisphere Freight Services, one of the United Kingdom's largest independently owned supply chain companies, chose Toyota Material Handling UK to supply a fleet of forklifts and install a racking and storage system in its new warehouse.

Hemisphere Freight Services chose Toyota after putting the contract to fit out its new 243,000 sq.ft. third party logistics (3PL) warehouse at Port One Logistics Park near Ipswich out to tender.

“The fact that Toyota could provide a turnkey solution that included supplying a full range of materials handling equipment, designing and constructing our racking system and project managing the installation through the build cycle was very attractive,” says Hemisphere Freight Services director Craig Perrin. 

After consulting with the company’s operations management, Toyota decided on a very narrow aisle (VNA) racking configuration that provided 1,800 more pallet locations than any of the other schemes put forward during the tender process.

“Essentially, Hemisphere Freight wanted a storage system that maximises the new site’s pallet capacity and delivers the flexibility required to cope with the different weight, size and shape of the products that its clients need to store,” says Chris Tarrant, Toyota Material Handling UK’s storage solutions specialist.

The new racking scheme has been designed to be compatible with any significant changes in the nature of the goods stored at the facility without the need to make potentially costly and time-consuming remedial work.

Each individual bay on every level within the storage scheme is 3.6 m wide. This allows an infinitely variable combination of standard-size or Euro-size pallets to be put away within each bay and means costly ‘dead space’ is eliminated throughout the facility.

The VNA racking is served by a fleet of Toyota Vector VCE150A articulated man-up combi trucks, which are connected to Toyota’s I_Site fleet management tool.  

With all the electricity for the site generated by PV solar panel roofing, the new warehouse will be one of the first carbon neutral logistics facilities in East Anglia.

This meant that energy efficiency was a significant influence on the choice of forklifts. 

Powered by lithium-ion batteries, Toyota’s VCE150A can operate at high intensity for up to five hours on a single hour’s recharge and the power supply can be topped up by simply plugging in to any of the compatible chargers. 

The efficient charging regime means there is no need for battery changes and therefor no need for a dedicated battery charging room, which frees up extra storage space.