The warehouse of the cork manufacture Belbo Sugheri

About Belbo Sugheri

Founded in Italy in 1990, Belbo Sugheri is a family business of devoted cork producers serving the winemaking industry. It supplies its clients with custom designed corks, which preserve all sorts of wines, including high-quality reserve vintages.

Over the last few years, the company has dedicated substantial resources to upgrading its production plant in Calamandrana, in Northern Italy. The production centre is set up with state-of-the-art equipment to treat cork and fulfil strict hygiene regulations throughout the entire processing cycle.

Needs of the company

Belbo Sugheri uses industrial big-bags to store the corks made in its manufacturing plant. The bags were set right on the floor, which used up enormous amounts of space.

Given the exceptional increase in production seen in recent years, the company integrated a storage system that would boost its storage capacity without having to extend the physical surface area. Currently, its production generates 250 million corks yearly, which gives an idea of how much product volume must be stored and handled.

After discussing its business needs with the technical team of Mecalux, the company settled on what it considered the most-suitable proposal in terms of its return on investment, namely the installation of push-back racks.

Warehouse features

The warehouse is 7 m high, 35 m long and 40 m wide. Mecalux enabled a 31.5 m long, 6 m high block of push-back racks with three storage levels to top out space usage.

Belbo Sugheri employs big-bags to stockpile bulk commodities, corks in this case. These sacks are set on pallets to facilitate their handling and storage in the racks.

The racks comprise slightly inclined shelving levels. Each channel includes three sets of trolleys which the product is placed on, holding up to four pallets deep.

One of the advantages of the push-back racks over other high-density systems is they only require a single working aisle for loading and unloading operations, which is why the block of racks lines the entire warehouse wall, filling otherwise unused space.

Moreover, in the face of future business growth, this feature also makes it easy to combine with other storage systems. Indeed, after trying out the efficiency of the high-density systems, Belbo Sugheri now has plans to install live pallet racking from Mecalux in the next few months, further adding to its storage capacity.

Advantages for Belbo Sugheri

• Uncorking storage capacity: these racks leverage the length of the warehouse and provide a capacity for 264 pallets, which more than meets the increased storage capacity the company needed to grow its business.
• Time is money: the push-back racks mean Belbo Sugheri has cut down on forklift trips when handling the pallets, since loading and unloading happen in the same working aisle.
• Sorted best: each channel holds the same SKU, which helps locate products faster from the same work aisle.