A huge delivery of steel shelving has now been installed at Capital Refractories Ltd, in Clowne, as part of an on-going improvement project.

Over 1,000 tonnes of material - around 1,150 pallets - had to be moved to construct the metal shelf frames and re-stack products at the company headquarters on Station Road, Clowne, Derbyshire. The project took about a week to complete.

Stuart Wilson, production manager at Capital Refractories Ltd, said: “It’s much better now, we can access any one pallet at any one time. We did a stock take today and it took half the time in usually does.”

As well as time efficiencies, the new shelving is also designed to help improve stock rotation while reducing waste and the need to re-mill materials.

All stock and its location in the factory warehouse is currently recorded on spread sheets and as part of the project there are plans to transfer onto an electronic system to gain more efficiencies.

Staff at the factory on Station Road, Clowne, Derbyshire, have also undergone further training as a result of the installation, especially in the use of new fork lift trucks designed to cope with higher shelving and narrower isles.

Stuart added: “There’s never a good time to do these changes but we’ve just had to get on and get it done, and we’ve completed it with no problems at all.”

The team heading up the make-over project, alongside Stuart included: Chris Bartley, maintenance engineer; Pete Hopkins, installation engineer and Ian Pashley, dispatch operative.

As part of the improvement project at Capital, there are also plans to introduce an automatic bagging plant at the factory premises on Station Road.