Herochu Warehouse Heavy Duty Industrial Sheet Metal Racking – Turn Dead Aisles into Dollars of Productivity
Steel sheets don’t look busy until you try to find the one 2 mm grade hiding under three tons of off-cuts. At that moment the real cost of “open-bay” storage appears: forklifts circling, operators waiting, laser lights idling, and floor space that costs more per square metre than a downtown apartment. Herochu’s drawer-type heavy-duty racking converts that chaos into a vertical filing cabinet for metal, reclaiming up to 80 % of your footprint while cutting retrieval time to the length of a coffee sip.
Every level is a full-extension drawer, not a fixed shelf. Pull, pick, push, proceed—no re-stacking, no second machine, no second person. Single-layer capacities from 50 kg to 5 000 kg let you store everything from shim stock to 10 mm armour plate in the same bay, and the modular frame grows upward, not outward, so you can add four extra drawers without buying another acre of concrete.
Built for the Weight, Tuned for the Worker
The heart of the system is a cold-rolled, laser-cut C-profile backbone, 5 mm thick and robot-welded under 600 °C stress relief. That skeleton keeps deflection under 0.3 mm at rated load, so drawers glide on sealed linear bearings instead of scraping steel on steel. A soft-close damping cartridge prevents the 80 dB crash that usually announces quitting time, while the positive-stop latch ensures the drawer stays put when the forklift brakes hard nearby.
Choose your muscle:
- Hand-pull for up to 1 500 kg—ideal for high-frequency tool-room traffic where speed beats horsepower.
- Hand-crank with a 60 mm diameter acme screw and 12:1 reduction; one rotation moves the drawer 28 mm, letting a 5 ft operator roll out 3 000 kg without a gym membership.
- Forklift pallet drawer rated to 10 000 kg; the drawer becomes a removable steel cassette that drops straight onto the truck forks and wheels to the laser, brake or shear, eliminating double handling entirely.
Custom Geometry, Not Custom Price
Send us a spreadsheet of your stock sizes or the native CAD file of your existing storage bay. Within 48 hours we return a layout that shows drawer height in 25 mm increments, clear passage widths and the exact colour code that matches your 5S scheme. Need the top level to clear a sprinkler head at 4 200 mm? We’ll shorten the upright and add a bolt-on mezzanine instead of forcing you to relocate the fire system. Want every second drawer grounded for copper inventory? We integrate copper bus-bars and star washers at no extra lead time.
The frame accepts add-ons like PVC deck liners to prevent galling on polished stainless, or neoprene gaskets for vibration-sensitive electronics. Slide in a barcode strip and the drawer becomes a live SKU; pair it with an RFID antenna and the MES books material out of stock the instant you pull the handle.
Floor Space That Pays Rent Again
A typical 6 m × 1.2 m aisle of random pallets holds roughly 15 tonnes of mixed sheet and occupies 7.2 m². Replace it with a 1.2 m × 1.4 m Herochu bank, 4 m high, and you can file 40 tonnes in the same footprint—an 80 % reduction that often frees enough square metres for an extra punching cell or a QA lab. One Midwest fabricator moved two racking units into an unused corner and discovered they had room to install a second 6 kW laser—paid for entirely by the real estate they recovered.
100 % Selectivity, 0 % Drama
Traditional cantilever racks force you to play Jenga with steel plates. Our full-extension drawers give you overhead crane or vacuum-lifter access to every square centimetre, so the bottom sheet is as reachable as the top one. That single feature erased an average 18-minute delay per nest at a German white-goods plant, adding 2.3 laser hours per shift—enough extra capacity to eliminate weekend overtime for six months.
Safety Auditors Finally Smile
Each drawer rides on a mechanical safety interlock that prevents more than one level from opening at once, eliminating the tip-over risk that hafts traditional roll-out shelving. A 150 mm high back-stop stops sheets from kissing the wall, while replaceable PVC edge protectors prevent the razor-sharp corner that usually finds the new apprentice’s forearm. The entire structure is anchored with M20 chemical studs rated for seismic zone 4, so when the inspector taps his torque wrench you can hand him the CE/UE/ISO 9001 certificate already laminated in plastic.
ROI That Arrives Before the Invoice Is Due
A 40-drawer installation storing 300 tonnes of carbon steel costs roughly the same as three days of laser downtime. At a typical European job-shop rate of €180 per machine hour, preventing just two hours of weekly delay recoups the investment in 14 months. Factor in reduced scratch rework, lower workers-comp premiums and the ability to store 30 % more material without new construction, and most customers see pay-back inside a single financial quarter.
Greener Than the Competition, Literally
Powder coat is VOC-free and cured with 78 % renewable electricity. Uprights are punched on a servo turret that recovers braking energy into the plant grid, and every kilo of off-cut steel is re-melted into the next batch of drawer sides. When the rack finally retires after decades, 97 % of its mass enters the recycling stream instead of landfill, helping you hit Scope 3 targets without a single spreadsheet formula.
From Sketch to Steel in Weeks
Send us your stock list or book an on-site laser scan. Our configurator returns a 3-D walk-through, seismic calculation and freight quote within 72 hours. Standard bays ship from Hamburg or Chicago in ten business days; custom colours or special load ratings add only a week. A two-person crew can assemble a 24-drawer section in four hours using nothing more than an impact wrench and a spirit level—no welded footplates, no torched slots, no downtime carnival.
Hear It From the Floor
“We replaced 2 000 m² of random stacking with Herochu drawers and gained an entire production hall. The laser guys actually complained the brake press was getting jealous.”
— Marco L., Plant Manager, 180-employee commercial kitchen OEM
“Safety inspector asked if we had hired a new lifting team. Nope—just a crank handle that lets our smallest technician move a tonne of stainless like she’s closing a file cabinet.”
— Sarah K., EHS Coordinator, aerospace sheet-cell
Take Back Your Aisles Today
Stop measuring storage success by how high you can stack before it collapses. Measure it by how fast you can feed the laser, how much floor you can reclaim, and how many people go home without a back brace. Herochu Warehouse Heavy Duty Industrial Sheet Metal Racking is CE, UE and ISO 9001 certified, customizable to the last millimetre, and ready to ship while your current pallet pile is still sliding sideways.
