Choosing The Right Type Of Industrial Shelving

In an industrial storage situation, there’s often a bit of choice, and shelving is no different. Different shelving has different use cases, and suits different situations and budgets. There’s not much use in getting industrial shelving that’s over-engineered for what you need. It’s also important that you don’t overload shelving with something too heavy; if that happens, the shelving may collapse and damage the goods that are stored on it or hurt somebody.

So let’s take a look at what kind of industrial shelving is available and what it’s good for. Here at Colby Dandenong, we generally separate our shelving into three categories. However, it can also be modified to suit specific needs.

Heavy Duty Shelving

Our heavy duty industrial shelving is designed to store the biggest weights and heaviest goods. Industrial shelving is perfect non-palletised goods, and heavy duty industrial shelving is no different. Except in the case of heavy duty shelving, it’s suited for larger or heavier items and is actually built from the same components that our pallet racking is made from. This is what makes it so strong.

It’s shelving, but with the strength of pallet racking.

What this also means is that our heavy duty industrial shelving can be customised in similar ways to our pallet racking. If the heavy items being storage are particularly tall, the shelf heights can be modified to accommodate. If the shelf height needs to be lower, the shelving can be modified for this as well.

With this in mind, our heavy duty shelving has a number of desk options including mush, particle board, chipboard, and steel. Some decking is more suitable for different items, and the exact decking used will depend on how heavy the items being stored are and how they need to be accessed.

All in all, heavy duty industrial shelving is reserved for the heaviest items. It’s also robust enough for all industrial applications.

Longspan Shelving

Longspan shelving is more suitable for lighter duty applications. This is what we sometimes classify as “general purpose” shelving. It’s great for storing most items such as general goods, cartons, file archives, and more. While our longspan shelving works well in warehouse picking and packing areas, it works just as well for general storage in less industrial situations, especially for offices that need to store large amounts of paper records.

Although longspan shelving isn’t suitable for the heavier weights that heavy duty shelving can take, it can still take up to 300 kilograms of weight, which works well for many storage situations. However, if you’re interesting in storing more than 300 kilograms per shelf, it’s best to look at heavy duty shelving.

Carton Live Storage

Carton live storage is a style of industrial shelving designed with easy picking and packing in mind.

Carton live storage systems use a slightly inclined shelf with rollers so that the goods stored on the shelving automatically roll to the front, making it easier for warehouse workers to pick items and pack them as needed. Ultimately, this saves both safe and time in the warehouse.

Carton live storage allows shelving to go much deeper because workers no longer need to reach back to retrieve items. Like our heavy duty shelving, carton live storage can also be built from ColbyRACK components, which means it can take heavy weight items as well.

What Shelving Is Right For Your Business?

Finding the right shelving for your business will depend on what’s being stored, why it’s being stored, and how it needs to be retrieved. These are just three general classifications of shelving, but it gets more in depth than that. The configuration of a specific type of shelving will depend again on how the shelving is being used for and how much it needs to store.

If you need shelving, feel free to contact us to discuss your needs.