One of Sydney’s leading suppliers of storage equipment for warehouses, Storage Ideas, has been named by Colby Storage Solutions as Distributor of the Year, achieving the title for the third year in a row.

For over 40 years, Storage Ideas has been a leader in providing complete service in the design, supply, and installation of warehouse and distribution centre storage equipment to businesses in New South Wales, including large third-party logistics (3PL) providers such as Qube Logistics

Storage Ideas received the 2021 award for its many successes in the industry, including the recent installation of a large Colby Storage Solution for Qube at its new 510,000 sqm warehouse in Moorebank, NSW. Storage Ideas installed selective and double-deep racking with custom pallet guides and rack protection at the 80,000-pallet position facility, which handles products from Australian retailers and manufacturers. The installation was completed in half the anticipated period.

“Installation at the new Qube distribution centre was initially due to be implemented in two stages over an 18-month period,” explains Robert Burke, director at Storage Ideas. “However, due to the pandemic impacting other projects, we were able to significantly increase the speed of the rack installation process, working six days a week to the project within just nine months.

The Qube racking design enables a wide range of product types to be stored, with a maximum weight of up to 1200 kg per pallet. The racking peaked at a height of 11.25 m, with total bay capacities of 14,400 kg. The ColbyRack design also incorporated heavy-duty uprights, beams, and baseplates in addition to Rack End Protection and Colby Protect-a-Rack Upright Guards.

“A key challenge with the racking was to provide the most appropriate mix of selective and double-deep racking to store a wide variety of product types,” adds Burke. “Qube also needed a pick face application within the bulk palletised storage areas as well as cross-docking of containers and flow from inbound to despatch.”

Colby Storage Solutions works to combine the flexibility of an Australian network of independent distributors with the resources of global materials handling leader Dematic. Dematic maintains its commitment to manufacturing Colby storage equipment locally to the highest possible standards of quality and safety.

Tony Woodlock, Colby Storage Solutions Director at Dematic said, “Robert, Nathan, and the team at Storage Ideas are amongst Colby’s longest-serving Authorised Distributors. One of the reasons is their consistent dedication to the customers they serve. They deliver ColbyRACK solutions on agreed design, terms, and schedules, whether it’s just three bays of rack for a small business or 75,000 pallet positions for a national distribution centre. They find a way to do storage better, and they do it with the best Australian-made adjustable pallet racking product available– ColbyRACK.”