Dock specialist Stertil Stokvis has undertaken construction of an external dock pod to provide an additional loading bay for warehousing and distribution expert Promethean.

Based in Blackburn, Promethean needed an expansion of its loading bay area but lacked the space, so Stertil was set the challenge of devising a solution.

Promethean's 33,000 ft² distribution centre receives around 10 deliveries and despatches 20 vehicles each day. The size of vehicle varies considerably, from huge containers to small vans, and the loading bay area needs to be flexible enough to cope with them all.

With the existing four loading bays already occupying most of the available space, and Promethean preferring not to finance the cost of digging out their existing yard to create a new bay, Stertil Stokvis had to think creatively to produce a workable solution.

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Jim Barker of Stertil Stokvis explained: "We came up with the idea of building an external dock pod, set into the corner of the existing loading area. This meant removing a wall to make space for the new structure and building a 12.5 metre ramp inside."

The new ramp had to be built with a 10% gradient to compensate for the height of the new dock pod and allow easy traffic of goods. As a whole, the installation included the dock pod, retractable dock shelter, galvanised steel roller shutter door, telescopic lip dock leveller, wheel guides, traffic lights and lock lights.

"Stertil Stokvis came to us highly recommended. I found the communication flow from initial contact to completion very effective," said John Birkett of Promethean. "The specific requirements of this installation made it pretty challenging, but Stertil's solution was clever, cost-effective and kept disruption to a minimum. The new dock pod fits our existing set-up perfectly and has enabled us to expand our capacity considerably. Thankfully, the recommendation proved very rewarding for Promethean and I would have no hesitation in working with them again."

(CD/JM)