Pet food and accessory warehouse of Pet Supermarket in Florida

About Pet Supermarket

The company is in the pet food and accessory business (i.e. toys, collars, cages, feeders, etc.). Through more than 180 shops around the State of Florida, it distributes its broad selection of products for cats and dogs of any age, breed or size.

Needs and the Pet Supermarket solution

Initially, Pet Supermarket had a 15,422 m² warehouse in Sunrise (Southern Florida). However, its warehousing capacity was a tight fit for all the goods required to supply its points-of-sale. Nor could it handle opening up any new shops.

The space issue meant the company was constantly reorganising the warehouse distribution to try and shoulder all the products it was receiving. Jim Sperrazza, logistics manager of Pet Supermarket, explains that “when we got in new products, we had to keep them on hold till a spot came open in the racks.”

Faced with this situation, Pet Supermarket has unveiled a new 9,012 m² distribution centre in the Floridian city of Davie, just a few kilometres from the one it had in Sunrise. Between the two installations, the company can now store a higher number of products and, thus, fulfil growing sales demands.

Interlake Mecalux and the storage solution provider Atlantic Rack have fitted out the new Pet Supermarket warehouse in Davie with 6 m high live racks that provide a storage capacity for 2,048 pallets.

Capacity and rotation

The live racks are comprised of a set of slightly inclined channels that keep pallets flowing via gravity’s natural pull. The goods are managed to fulfil the FIFO principle (first in, first out). In other words, the first pallet in is the first to leave. Pallets are inserted into the highest end of the storage track from the loading aisle. They then slide, on their own, to the opposite end and are extraction-ready. This system is essential for housing perishable goods like the ones Pet Supermarket holds (mainly canned cat and dog food with an expiry date).

One of the advantages of having a dedicated loading aisle, and another for unloading, is that inputs and outputs of goods can be done at the same time, and all interference-free. Furthermore, this feature averts aisle oversaturation or same aisle operator overlap (which slows down tasks and, ultimately, causes a higher risk of accidents).

Each one of the storage aisles is set aside for a single SKU. Operators can access all SKUs that are stored from the same work aisle.

“Products stay put between four to five weeks,” , explains Mr Sperrazza. That said, the inflows and outflows of pallets in the racking are swift. When an operator pulls out the first pallet from each location, those that remain slide one slot forward. Thus, storage channels are always full of reserve product. “We can store up to four pallets in each channel,” he adds.

Interlake Mecalux and Atlantic Rack have taken painstaking care of every detail. In the initial design phase, for example, they detected and resolved several incidents. In the words of Atlantic Rack executive, Luis Jiménez, “We had our eye on some live wheel tracks, but realised they were prone to jamming. That is why we swapped them for other wider ones, so pallets would move seamlessly.”

Jim Sperrazza - Logistics Manager of Pet Supermarket
“For around 20 years, we have used Interlake Mecalux racks in almost all our logistics projects. We are very satisfied with them because they are high-quality products.”.

Advantages for Pet Supermarket

• Increased storage capacity: with the grand-opening of this centre, Pet Supermarket has expanded its storage capacity by 25-30%, from what it started out with in the Sunrise facilities.
• Higher productivity: the live racking eases product loading and unloading, which is done simultaneously. Everything runs quickly and with no interference.
• Better surface purposing: the live pallet racking makes full use of all the available space to provide a 2,048-pallet storage capacity.