Store-All Warehousing Ltd stores a wide range of products for different companies under optimal conditions. Situated at the entrance to Belview Port (Waterford), a new warehouse was constructed that was ideally located for companies importing and exporting goods through the Port Terminal. A customer at this facility, recently invested in a Premier pallet inverter and two sets of RollerForks®. Store-All Warehousing needed to ship high volumes of bagged goods containing milk powder to a customer outside Ireland. Each pallet weighed around 1,000 kg and had to be shipped in 40-ft containers.

Normally, bagged goods are stored internally on pallets, but pallets are very expensive and even more costly when they have to be pre-heated in line with ISPM 15 regulations. Store-All using now loads their goods using far cheaper slipsheets. Forklift truck drivers collect palletized bags from the warehouse and place them into the Premier inverter near to the loading bay. The inverter is fitted with special-purpose pockets for use with RollerForks® to improve handling speed. When the load is turned, the pallet can be taken away and replaced with a slipsheet. RollerForks are then inserted into the pockets to extract the slipsheeted goods from the inverter. The forklift truck then drives into the container, places the slipsheeted load onto the floor and reverses out leaving the load in place.

RollerForks® are in fact regular forklift truck tines made up of two layers of rollers. When the bottom row of rollers touches the floor, it causes the top row of rollers to rotate in the opposite direction thereby allowing the forks to slide under the slipsheet without damaging the load. When the forks are raised, the rollers drop lowering the load safely onto the upper side of the forks, and vice versa enabling the products to be unloaded in the opposite loading order.

RollerForks® have unique characteristics compared to familiar push-pull systems:

• No additional hydraulic system
• Virtually the same weight as standard forklift truck tines
• Driver visibility is not restricted
• Little or no reduction in forklift truck capacity
• Forklift truck can also be used to perform standard tasks
• Products can be easily placed on a pallet
• Faster loading and unloading
• Lower investment costs

Store-All Warehousing is extremely satisfied with its RollerForks®/Pallet Inverter combination – both of which were supplied by A.F. Engineering, Irish dealer for MSE-Forks.