In early December we refurbished the entire Richard Sexton & Co warehouse, replacing the old cardboard boxes we stored our stock in, which themselves were recycled wool yarn boxes, with British made metal racking (shelving).
It’s something we’ve wanted to do for many years to improve our usage of space in our converted cow barn warehouse which we can’t expand as it has a very hard 2 foot thick limestone wall limit! It will make it a lot easier to find and access our stock for sending out to both trade and retail customers as well as making the business significantly more efficient.
The open back of each row is designed to let air flow through so that the products are kept in the best possible condition and the warehouse can be cleaned easily. You’d be amazed how every corner of our warehouse builds up with wool fluff every week. An unexpected perk of the open back shelving has meant so much more light is filtering through, making it a much nicer environment to work in.
It’s taken a few weeks of emptying all the old boxes, putting stock in bags, moving half of it to another location, demolishing the old boxes and donating them to Settle Swimming Pool where they are recycled (in return for funding for the pool), a week of installation then putting the old stock back. And there’s still quite a bit of tweaking and labelling to come until it’s perfect.
The racking was purchased through a local company, the Racking Company in Ilkley, who also organised a fantastic team of lads to install it over a week. The racking itself is all made in the UK and at no extra cost was colour coordinated to our Glencroft brand green so it’s perfect for holding our traditional British country clothing.
Our cardboard boxes have lasted 30 years, so we’re expecting this to last another 50, we better not be going anywhere!
See before and after photos below:
It’s all been made possible by part funding by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development: Europe investing in rural areas.
