All Sea Food Processing unit having Temperature Controlled Warehouse as part of their operations, to store products like fish prawns shrimps etc. in cold storage.
We found that in sea food processing industry, Temperature Controlled Warehouses with fewer SKUs are typically designed with either Double Deep, Shuttle Racking or Drive In types of Racking systems, to optimise the cost of cooling and maintaining the required operating temperature. The Pantograph Reach Trucks are popular WHE which are deployed in such cold storages. However, the issue with these Reach Trucks is that they cannot function smoothly in narrow aisles. Further their wheels are smaller in size with much lesser ground clearance which may result in operational problems.
To counter this problem, we suggest - both single-deep & double-deep Articulated Forklift Trucks with and w/o heated cabins. These trucks can very well operate in narrow aisles and in cold rooms with -22 degree centigrade intermittently. The trucks with fully enclosed heated cabins can function upto 4 hours in the cold rooms with -40 degree centigrade operating temperature. Other than this, we offer these trucks fitted with Quad Mast with lower closed mast height to keep the door height to the minimum possible.
Following are some of the ways, we at Nilkamal, can help customers:
(a) Develop green-field cold-stores with single-deep or double-deep pallet racking with the appropriate truck that optimises pallet storage resulting in lower per pallet investment & operating costs for the customer.
(b) Relay existing racks in a customer’s cold store warehouse so aisle-widths can be decreased to increase storage capacity in an existing cold-store.
(c) Lower their typical fixed costs per pallet including land,
construction materials, and construction cost and refrigeration equipment.
(d) Lower their typical operating costs per pallet including fixed over-heads to run the warehouse, electricity for refrigeration & labour due to increased productivity.
Additional features & benefits specifically for cold store applications:
1. The Heated Cabin allows the driver to comfortably operate the truck in the cold environment (upto -40 deg C) for 4 continuous hours without breaks. This increases labour productivity & equipment uptime.
2. Allocated area for Bar Code scanning: The glass of the cabin at -40 deg C gets covered with ice which obstructs the laser from reading the bar-code. The heated window provided in the truck prevents condensation allowing the scanner to read the barcode.
3. Battery capacity: (i)The discharge rate of a battery is high at cold temperatures. The Nilkamal team carefully studied this application and teamed up with Combilift to offer a 930 Ah high-capacity battery. The higher thermal mass of this larger battery facilitates 4 hours of continuous operation. (ii) To further extend the battery life, we offer low-power consuming LED lights for visibility & safety. Both these options increase the time between battery changes & re-charges, extend the life of the battery & improve equipment & worker productivity.
4. The battery is quickly & easily changed at the rear of the Articulated Forklift Truck with a hand-pallet truck. This increases equipment uptime & productivity.
We have supplied the AM Trucks for Double deep racking system. The trucks are without heated cabin but modified to work in operating temp. of -22 deg. cent. for intermittent period. Our first customer is so satisfied with our product that they even tried to relay the racking layout in their existing TCW with Pantograph RT so as to replace the same with AM Truck.
