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Mecalux has built an automatic warehouse for Porcelanosa in an amazing building of 35m high and 260m long in Vila-real (Castellón). The facilities have the storage capacity of five million square metres of tiles in a total of 102,000 pallets.
The investment of the whole logistic centre installed by Mecalux for Porcelanosa, including its robotization and the civil work, reached the 19 million Euros in a first phase. In this stage 11 elevating platforms were installed, servicing 22 racks of simple depth, and hundreds of peripheral elements were added, from roller, chain or gravity conveyors to rotating tables, passing through shuttles, pallet stackers and lifters.
In a second stage, recently developed, four more elevating platforms and eight simple depth racks were installed, in addition to their respective input headers and pallet output. The installation destined to the location is extremely wide, because it consisted on 30 shelves of 163m long and almost 31m height.
Bi-column Elevating Platform
For Porcelanosa to work with total efficiency and safety, Mecalux has installed 15 powerful bi-column platforms with the same height as the racks, which flow through aisles of 1,750mm wide at 180m/min, and which can lift the 1,600kg pallets at a speed of 48 m/min. All of them have an independent elevator that allows the maintenance tasks as well as the use of the lifter in a manual way while keeping the best view at a cradle level.
Every day the warehouse receives 200 orders from the commercial areas of the company. 50% of the product, manufactured and located in that complex, has the own Porcelanosa stores as destination, extended through more than 80 countries all around the world. The pallets, with the product that comes from the factory to which the warehouse is connected, must cross a subterranean tunnel of 300m long and 3m depth, where a conveyor goes by to which the load is loaded through a service lift. At the end of the route, the goods arrive to the automated lines that will bring them up to the header of the warehouse complex.
Through the labelling and identification process, previous step before the introduction of the pallets to the input points, about 1,200 load units per day go by on the way to the warehouse. Regarding the expeditions, 1,800 pallets are daily taken out. The Porcelanosa silo needs an efficient and agile work, for that reason simple depth racks were installed, because they allow a faster speed in the input and output pallets operations. Moreover, this big warehouse has different picking places with four pneumatic manipulators that, thanks to their pins, allow the operator easily handle the chosen goods, which are usually very heavy.
About Mecalux
MECALUX is one of the worldwide leaders in warehouse global solutions. Its main activity consists on the design, manufacturing and commercialisation of services related to metallic shelving, automated warehouses and other storage solutions. The Mecalux Group has 8 production plants in 6 countries, direct commercial presence in 16 countries, 3,100 professionals and revenues of 531.1 M Euros. Mecalux possesses a strategic position in the development of automated storage technology and its implementation in all the markets where it operates.