Modular Shelving

The shelves clip to the posts at set intervals instead of being welded in place, so the heights are a decision you make on the day and can change later. A bay also joins to the next bay, which is how a run gets built along a wall.

The practical effect is that one purchase covers several layouts. A welded rack cannot be changed once it is made, which is fine for a store room that will never move and awkward everywhere else.

Posts stood up, clips located at the heights you want, shelves dropped on. Most systems need no tools and two people, and a bay goes together in minutes once the first one has shown you how it works.

Assemble it in position rather than building it elsewhere and carrying it through a doorway. The instructions for the system you buy are on the product documents page.

Wire where you want air movement, light through the bay and anything spilled to drain rather than pool. Solid where the stock is small, loose or likely to leak, and where you want a flat surface to slide containers across.

A mixed bay is common and perfectly sensible. Clear containers on a wire shelf give you the best of both: see gastronorms and containers and ingredient bins.

That is one of the main reasons to buy modular. Most systems take a castor set in place of the feet, which turns a bay into something you can roll out to clean behind or move between a store and a prep area.

Check that the system you choose offers castors before you commit, and remember that a mobile bay should be loaded lower than a static one. Castor sets are in modular shelving accessories.

Start with the aisle, not the shelving. Decide how wide a path you need to get stock in and a trolley through, then fill what is left with bays. A room shelved to the walls with no working aisle is a room staff avoid.

Then set the shelf heights to the cartons you actually buy. Send us the room dimensions and a note of your main stock lines and we will sketch a layout with you, including how it ties into the commercial kitchen shelving already in place.

Only if the finish is made for cold, damp air. A standard dry-store finish will corrode in a refrigerated room, so the version matters more than the system.

We list the refrigerated-use options under commercial cool room shelving. Air circulation also has to be preserved, so a cool room bay is laid out with gaps rather than packed solid.

It is set by the shelf, the span and whether the bay is static or mobile, so the rating on the product page is the number to work to. A longer shelf holds less than a short one in the same system.

Load heaviest at the bottom and spread the weight across the shelf rather than concentrating it in the middle. Where the stock is genuinely heavy, shorter bays and more of them beat one long run, and a platform trolley saves carrying cartons in by hand.