Industrial protections
Column protectors
A structural column is the one thing in a warehouse that cannot be replaced over a weekend, and it usually stands exactly where the traffic turns. Column protectors put a barrier between the vehicle and the structure, and make the column visible long before anyone gets close to it.
Why columns need protecting
In a building where handling equipment works all day, a column takes knocks it was never designed for. Repeated impacts weaken it, and unlike a dented rack frame the damage is to the structure of the building itself, which is why the consequences run from a repair to an evacuation.
A protector does two jobs at once. It absorbs the impact energy before it reaches the column, and it makes the column obvious: a visible barrier is a standing instruction to drivers to keep their distance, which prevents more collisions than it absorbs.
Three kinds, for three levels of impact
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Column guards
A physical barrier around the column that takes the everyday knock. The sensible choice in light industrial buildings and in warehouses where the vehicle movements are controlled and predictable.
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Racking column protectors
Engineered for the columns inside a storage system, where a narrow aisle brings a reach truck close to the steel many times a shift and the impact would otherwise land on the racking as well.
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Heavy duty protection barriers
A barrier with structural elements of its own, for loading bays, main traffic routes and buildings running large handling equipment, where the energy involved is a different order.
What to look for in a protector
Impact resistance first: the protector has to take the force the vehicles in your building can actually generate, and it should have been tested rather than merely described as heavy duty. Ask for the standard and the test conditions, from us as much as from anyone else.
Then installation and replacement. A protector that takes a day to fit is a protector that gets postponed, and one that cannot be swapped after a serious hit leaves the column unprotected until a special order arrives. Both are decisions you make once and live with for years.
Rejuva specifies from several makers rather than being tied to one, which is what allows the recommendation to follow the column and the traffic around it instead of the catalogue.
Matching the protection to the risk
Heavy traffic and large machinery call for heavy duty protection; a quiet corner with a pallet truck does not, and spending the budget evenly across a building is the most common way to under-protect the two or three columns that actually get hit.
The assessment is quick and it happens on the floor: which columns sit on a turning circle, which ones are already marked, and where the aisle width leaves a driver no room to correct.
Protection for every point that gets hit
Each of these covers one kind of impact, and most sites need three or four of them rather than all six. Which ones follows from where the damage is already showing.
Two places worth walking through first
A warehouse and a car park fail in different ways, so it is worth reading the whole of one before choosing individual products.
Have a project in mind?
Describe what needs to happen in the building and we will come back with a proposed approach, the specialist who would carry it out and a budget you can work with.