Raising the roof on wine distribution

When Rathbone Wine Group (RWG) moved its headquarters and distribution centre to Port Melbourne five years ago, the inner-city location meant that space was at a premium.

In conjunction with its logistics arm 14 Degrees Logistics, RWG’s plans called for an extra-high 14 m roof, allowing pallets to be stacked higher than usual. According to Paul Viani, logistics manager for RWG and 14 Degrees, the difficulty lay in reaching the heights that would unlock the maximum storage capacity in the 4500 m² facility.

“Obviously, the closer you get to the city, the less space is available,” Viani said. “With this site we had to try to maximise what was available to us, and that meant going up. The problem is that good, safe picking equipment doesn’t really reach as high as we needed.”

The BT Vector-A Series Turret Truck at RWG’s distribution centre.

Toyota Material Handling Australia (TMHA) helped engineer a solution to find the most efficient packing and picking methods for the company.

“TMHA was able to supply us with a BT Vector-A Series Turret Truck which, at the time, was the only one in the country capable of reaching these heights,” Viani said.

“This Turret Truck reaches higher than any similar product we had available to us and allowed us to add a seventh level of pallets - which gives us an extra 1000 pallets of storage. That’s an extra $3000 to $4000 of storage per week - or around $200,000 per year.”

A new, specially engineered Raymond 5200 Series Order Picker is also enhancing the RWG business. “With more than 10,000 cases heading out of the warehouse each week, anything that saves us time and makes it easier on our pickers is a huge benefit,” Viani said.

The versatility of the TMHA products isn’t the only appealing aspect for RWG.

“The most important thing for us is that all of our TMH equipment is very rarely out of service,” Viani said. “Combined with the regular monthly servicing and the strong aftersales support, reliability is just not an issue for us.”