Food & Beverage — Pallet Racking Inspections

Why the report matters at audit as well as at inspection

BRCGS and SALSA schemes require you to control the storage of raw materials, packaging and finished product, and to maintain premises and equipment in a condition that does not present a contamination or safety risk. Racking sits squarely inside that scope, so an auditor asking 'show me your storage equipment inspection' should be handed a dated report, a named competent inspector and a closed-out action list.

That is a documentation problem as much as an engineering one. We issue findings with bay-level references, photographs and a classification, so each action can be closed out with evidence and referenced in your own corrective action log. Where a defect was found and repaired, the closure record is what turns an old red finding from a liability into proof the system works.

The same report supports HACCP thinking indirectly: a collapsed or leaning bay above an open product line is a physical hazard, and identifying and controlling it is exactly the kind of preventive control an auditor expects to see managed rather than discovered.

Hygiene zones change how the inspection is run

Food sites are zoned, and an inspector cannot simply walk from a dry goods warehouse into a high-care area. We plan the route with your technical team so zone transitions, changing requirements and any equipment restrictions are handled properly, and so nothing carried into a production area becomes a foreign-body risk.

Practical detail matters here. Measuring equipment and cameras used in open-product areas are checked and accounted for on entry and exit, tape and marking materials used to isolate a defective bay are chosen so they cannot shed, and where a bay in a high-care area needs immediate isolation we agree the method with your technical manager rather than improvising.

Washdown and wet process areas get specific attention. Frequent cleaning with water and chemicals attacks coatings at floor level, so baseplates, anchors and the lowest 500mm of uprights in these areas are inspected for corrosion as a matter of course.

Load notices and the pallet weight problem

Food and beverage stock is dense. Beverage pallets, tinned goods, sacked ingredients and glass packaging are among the heaviest palletised loads in UK warehousing, and they are frequently stored on racking that was configured for a lighter product mix years earlier.

Two things then go wrong. Load notices state a safe working load for a configuration that no longer exists, and beam levels get moved to fit taller pallets without anyone rechecking the beam capacity at the new pitch. Both are common findings, and both are straightforward to correct once identified.

We check displayed load notices against the installed configuration and the actual product being stored, and where they do not match we say so. Replacement site-specific signage is available through our load notices and racking signage service.

Building the regime around production, not against it

Food sites rarely have a convenient shutdown. Inspections are scheduled around production and cleaning windows, and split across visits where a single pass is impossible. Chilled, ambient and dry stores are covered in one report so you hold one document per site rather than three partial ones.

Between annual visits, the weekly check by a trained Person Responsible for Racking Safety is what keeps the record continuous. Our weekly PRRS training covers the sector-specific things worth looking for — corrosion in washdown zones, pallet overhang on dense loads, and damage in the goods-in lanes where turnover is highest.

Food & Beverage racking inspection FAQs

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