Herochu Steel Sheet Storage Ideas
Turn 60 × 120 inch stock from obstacle into advantage
A five-foot by ten-foot plate does not look intimidating until it is leaned against a wall at 3 mm thick and 145 kg decides to slide. One scratched brushed-finish, one trapped toe, one lost forklift minute and the savings you made on the coil are gone. Herochu designs racks that let the sheet lie flat, fully supported, single-touch retrievable and impossible to warp. The result is measurable: 35 % faster nesting programmes, 70 % reduction in surface rework, and a floor footprint that shrinks every month as you compress more SKU’s into the same bay.
Start with the load, not the label
We open every project with a one-page load map: grade (mild, galvanised, stainless, aluminium), pack height (usually 50–200 mm), single-sheet mass (6 mm hot-rolled reaches 140 kg) and how many packs you want visible at once. That determines beam centres, roller pitch and the drive assist you actually need—no more, no less. A fabrication shop in Leeds discovered that two packs of 2 mm galvanised could share a 1 550 mm wide drawer because the nominal 1 525 mm sheet trims to 1 520 mm; we saved them one entire aisle and two forklift trips per nest.
Four concepts that cover every workflow
- Forklift Block Rack
Welded S355 frame with 3 t shelf capacity and 300 mm high containment lips. Fork pockets are chamfered so the truck blade centres itself even if the driver approaches at 5°. Pallet locator plates stop the pack 40 mm short of the rear upright, giving the vacuum lifter room to engage. Zinc-sprayed finish survives outdoor yards yet will not mark polished stainless. One rack, one forklift, one operator—no hand contact. - Manual Roll-Out Drawer
Need three sheets of 1 mm for tomorrow’s HVAC casings? Rotate the crank or push the 24 V button; the drawer glides out on sealed bearings, stopping exactly at 650 mm exposure so you can reach the centre without stepping into the aisle. Load bars are spaced at 500 mm centres and pre-crowned 1 mm so the drawer is dead flat under load. A captive wedge lock prevents accidental extension during transport or seismic event. - Hybrid Tower
Ground floor: four roll-out drawers for daily mixes. Upper levels: two forklift shelves for mother packs. Total height 4 200 mm—still below most bridge cranes. One side aisle 1 300 mm wide serves both zones, cutting travel by 40 % compared with separate systems. A Leeds subcontractor fitted three towers back-to-back and released 210 m² for a new fibre-laser cell. - Fully Automated Carrier
Where night shifts cost overtime and floor space is €180 per square metre, the vertical lift tower makes sense. Sheets are filed in 70 mm increments; the extractor travels at 0.8 m/s and delivers any pack to the out-feed conveyor in under 45 seconds. The control system links to SigmaNEST or AlmaCAM so the list for the next job is already queued when the night operator arrives. One tower stores 150 t in 28 m²—eight times the density of block stacking.
Steel sheet storage ideas that respect the material
Galvanised stock hates damp timber and dissimilar-metal contact. We line every support face with UV-stable HDPE 1 000 daN slip strips rated for −30 °C to +80 °C. Stainless sheets demand more: optional PVC edge protectors and non-marring nylon rollers prevent ferritic transfer that later shows up as rust bloom. For pre-painted automotive exposed panels we supply felt-lined cassettes and forced-air dividers so sheets never touch even under 10 t stack pressure.
Certification you can photocopy to your insurer
Herochu holds EU-type CE certificates for both static steelwork (EN 13105) and motorised machinery (EN 60204). Weld procedures are qualified to ISO 3834-2 and inspected by SLV personnel. The finish meets ISO 9223 C3 moderate corrosivity after 1 000 h salt spray, adequate for unheated bays. Every rack leaves the works with a numbered inspection dossier that includes FEM 10.2.08 deflection graphs, load test photos and a signed Declaration of Conformity. Insurance underwriters recognise the file; premiums have been reduced by up to 15 % where our racks replaced floor bundles.
Price begins at €3 660, pay-back in eight months
A five-drawer manual unit rated 2 t per level, 1 550 mm wide, 3 100 mm deep, costs €3 660 ex-works Zaragoza. Add €1 180 for motorisation and €420 for light curtains. A typical Yorkshire subcontractor reported: “We were paying two men 20 minutes per nest just to fish sheets out of the stack. The Herochu rack cut that to 4 minutes. At £55 per hour the saving is £4 400 per month—rack paid for itself before the quarter closed.”
Layout service included—send a sketch, receive a plan
Email a rough floor plan, crane hook height and the maximum pack weight. Within 24 hours we return a scaled drawing, aisle widths, cycle time estimate and total cost. If you prefer, we fly an engineer on-site anywhere in Europe for a one-day audit; travel cost is credited against the order.
Herochu steel sheet storage ideas do not just hold metal; they remove the hidden minutes that erode margin, they reclaim space you already rent, and they give every operator a safe, repeatable path from stock to laser bed. Stop decorating the aisle with leaning plates—store them once, retrieve them forever.
