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You may not realise it because this product was originally developed for laboratories, but a fire safety storage cabinet with folding doors is ideal for warehouses! After all, a swing door has a full exit, which is not very practical for order picking. Henk Niewenhuis gave us these and many more tips when we spoke to him about the danger of flammables in warehouses. He is director of Asecos, the leading market leader in safe storage solutions for hazardous substances: “Today, more and more locations are emerging from which deliveries are made directly to the end customer. At these hubs where order picking takes place, there is no longer a storage facility, but a so-called grab stock. Then you have to deal with different regulations and need to have a safe storage facility.”
Asecos is the world's largest manufacturer of fire safety storage cabinets built in accordance with European standard EN 14470 part 1 and 2. “For order picking in a hub, a fire safety storage cabinet with folding doors is very functional. These doors can remain in the open position, so you don't have to open and close a door every time you pick a product. And since folding doors only have half a turn, they are no longer a major obstacle in aisles. The beauty of these types of cabinets is that, in case of fire, they are ‘fused’ in such a way that they will fall shut. As a result, the hazardous substance inside the cabinet cannot contribute to the fire outside the cabinet.”
The Q-Phoenix cabinets from Asecos have the aforementioned features. Uniquely, Asecos is the only manufacturer to provide the cabinet with an integrated transport base. “Thanks to this transport base and the extremely solid construction, the cabinet can easily be removed from under a rack using a forklift truck to be moved to another location.’
Niewenhuis also points out the advantage of independent fire compartments: “The Q-Phoenix cabinet has a fireproof middle wall, creating two hermetically separated storage compartments. This obviously contributes to safety. Incidentally, when choosing a fireproof storage cabinet, it is important to check whether it meets certain standards. Our cabinets meet the EN-14470-1 standard, and within this standard has the highest fire resistance from outside to inside which is 90 minutes.”
If one wants to use sump trays to prevent liquid from spilling onto the underlying packaging in case of leakage, Niewenhuis gives important advice: “Make sure the sump tray is made of the same material as that of the packaging. If the packaging consists of plastic bottles, for example, we advise customers to use our plastic containers instead of the steel collection containers. This is because the leaked substance might well react with the steel.”
Another hint Niewenhuis gives concerns inspection. “Scaffolding should be inspected regularly, but so should fire safety storage cabinets. While you can have racking inspected by someone within the organisation, that does not apply to a fire safety storage cabinet! Our fitters are also inspectors and we can therefore carry out both inspections annually, if required.”
Finally, Niewenhuis hints at the danger of lithium ion batteries and the special guidelines for their storage. “Warehouses are full of goods containing lithium ion batteries and these can spontaneously ignite. Think phones, laptops and scanning equipment for order picking. For more information, I would like to refer to the article in the previous edition of this magazine.”
