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5 Ways a Mezzanine Floor Can Add Value to Your Business
From extending storage to office space
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Quick Quote
Contact Mick Coyne
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UK
Current location:
With businesses across the world now getting back into the swing of things, efficiency is more important than ever. Customers are expected to surge as people become more comfortable in crowded spaces, and businesses need the capacity to serve them. At the same time, however, many businesses are still struggling from the series of lockdowns, and want to save money where they can.
One forward-looking way to achieve both of these goals is to invest in a mezzanine floor. If you can look past the initial cost, a mezzanine floor could add exceptional value to your business, playing host to all kinds of equipment and spaces. Here are five examples of how a mezzanine floor could put you in the perfect position for growth.
Extend your retail space
Retail is likely to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of restrictions ending, with people desperate to get out and enjoy themselves. This could create demand beyond what most would have experienced before the pandemic, and leave storefronts struggling to cope. The potential for crowding will be worrying, both for the customer experience and the ongoing risks of COVID.
A retail mezzanine floor could be an ideal solution. In a space with sufficient headroom, a retail mezzanine could create an entirely new floor above your existing shop space, whether it covers the whole floor plan or skirts around the edges. This space could be used to showcase entirely new products, or even host facilities such as a café, encouraging people to stay longer and making your business a destination.
Retail mezzanines have been successfully deployed by businesses on all sorts of scales, from the enormous shopping floor at Sainsbury’s Ashford to smaller high street shops. Allowing you to create extra space from your wasted headroom, break up different types of stock by floors and create an imposing entrance, a mezzanine floor could be the ideal solution to maximise your retail space.
Add storage capacity
If storage capacity is an issue, you may want to consider a storage mezzanine. The use of empty headroom for additional storage will not only make better use of your unoccupied headroom, but could also bring your storage closer to your production or distribution area, or to staff in a retail position. This could either add additional capacity or concentrate your storage in another area, so that you can reassign other spaces.
Mezzanine floors can host all kinds of storage types, from dense high capacity pallet racking to mobile shelving. These shelving and racking formats can be installed together with your mezzanine floor, which will be designed and constructed to support the load requirements. Shelving is also ideal for a mixed-use mezzanine, as a complement to offices or production space.
If you’re looking to add new capacity to your warehouse storage area, a mezzanine may be the perfect solution. Storage mezzanine floors can be easily integrated with storage areas below, with access stairs and lifts to allow personnel or vehicles to travel between floors. A good mezzanine floor provider should be able to engineer a solution which maintains your existing racking while safely supporting the mezzanine above it.
Create new office space
One under-appreciated use of mezzanine floors is to create new office space. A properly constructed structural steel mezzanine is capable of supporting substantial loads, and can handle an office structure with ease. This could be the perfect way to scale up and hire new staff without having to move premises, two steps that can often conflict with each other.
Like other mezzanines, office mezzanines can utilise a variety of access types, including lifts, stairs and walkways. It’s not uncommon for multiple mezzanine offices to be linked using walkways, or for a mezzanine to be linked directly to another parallel structure. An office mezzanine may also be a good location to provide WiFi to a large, cluttered space, or a vantage point for staff.
Office mezzanines are perhaps most frequently deployed as offices for supervisors or managers. This not only allows them to monitor what’s going on below (whether that’s a production or storage area), but also to quickly respond to any issues. It can also ease any administrative issues by bringing your admin and storage or production departments closer together, increasing collaboration.
Speed up distribution
The surge in online shopping due to the coronavirus has seen some companies struggling to meet demand, and others stockpiling to avoid logistical pileups. For manufacturers and fulfilment centres, this has created a need for more (and more efficient) storage, as well as a rapid optimisation of the fulfilment process. With online shopping only continuing to grow, this need is only going to get more pressing.
A mezzanine floor could be the perfect solution to your logistics needs. Mezzanines are ideal for hosting storage, production lines or packing areas, with the potential to integrate conveyor belts and AS/RS systems for rapid storage and retrieval. Lifts and drop chutes meanwhile can carry goods down to a packing or storage area, depending on your use case.
By adding additional storage or production areas to your current facility with a mezzanine floor, you can ensure that your logistics process isn’t disrupted. Your input and output of goods can be accelerated without having to construct new facilities and redirect transport – instead harnessing the empty headroom in your warehouse space.
Elevate outdoor areas
Many people think of mezzanine floors as being a purely internal construction. Yet, used in the right way, a mezzanine floor can be the perfect addition to your building exterior, most often for retail businesses. A mezzanine could be used to create a veranda around an elevated structure, additional outdoor seating for restaurants, or even spaces for outdoor events.
The great advantage of a mezzanine floor here is its adaptability. Outdoor mezzanines can use weather-resistant paint and decking to protect the mezzanine from the elements, and make it suitable for year-round use. Everything from the stairs to the handrails can also be customised, with the ability to make your mezzanine blend in with its surroundings, or sport your company colours.
Outdoor mezzanines can add a touch of class to your premises as well as utility. A well equipped and decorated mezzanine can make your retail business or restaurant stand out, and enhance its appeal during the hot summer months. That edge could be important as we head into a COVID-free summer, particularly with so many people keen to meet up, shop and eat out.
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Mezzanine floors are an underappreciated way to add serious, long term value to your business. Not only can you use them for all of the purposes above, but they are also modular, meaning they can be easily relocated or extended. To discuss your requirements and arrange a complementary site visit, contact us today.
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