Mecalux pallet racks in the warehouses of the wholesaler Atacadão

Success spanning over 50 years

Created in April 1962, Atacadão is a wholesaler that offers a wide, varied product catalogue for its clientele: supermarkets, drugstores, hotels, restaurants, bakeries and small shops mostly.

The company, with a 50,000-strong team, has flourished since its founding. Claudio Pierre Galvão, Atacadão's purchasing and services manager, says: “In 2018, we had 166 self-service shops and 27 distribution centres in Brazil. By 2019, our goal is to open 20 more of these shops and two more warehouses.”.

Atacadão's success is rooted in the fact that, since its beginnings, it has carried out sound management of all resources and warehouse operations to deliver orders to customers as quickly as possible.

To do so, it has always relied on the collaboration of a top company in storage solutions like Mecalux. “Not only does it offer quality products, but it also has given us a customised care to satisfy our needs throughout the process. Besides that, it has always kept to the deadlines,” says the purchasing and services manager.

In fact, Mecalux has equipped thirteen of its warehouses scattered throughout Brazil; all of them fitted with pallet racks because, in the words of Galvão, “they are very popular with companies in our sector.”

Capacity and direct access

Recently, Atacadão constructed a new 45,000 m² warehouse in the town of Jacareí (State of São Paulo). “We needed another warehouse because our storage space was too small to handle our business' reception and shipment volumes,” explains the purchasing manager. “Our goal was to speed up the distribution of products to points of sale in this state and encourage door-to-door sales,” he adds. Naturally, it sought out Mecalux’s advice to carry out this project.

The warehouse’s construction took place in six different stages. The centre has been gradually expanding its storage capacity in keeping with Atacadão's logistical needs. “We have space for 42,898 pallets, although at the moment we are storing around 30,000,” explains Galvão.

“Each day, we receive 2,800 pallets and ship out another 3,220,” notes the manager. Taking this amount of work into account, Mecalux pallet racks have been installed. These occupy almost the entire surface area and facilitate goods management. On a normal working day, the operators walk through the storage aisles introducing and removing pallets from their corresponding locations using reach trucks.

The racks are 9 m high by 36 m long and divided into six shelf levels. Due to the long aisles, an underpass has been opened up. It crosses all the racks and optimises operator movements, besides serving as an emergency exit.

Operators use ground-level picking machines at lower shelf levels. They collect the boxes that make up each order straight from the pallets and group them on another pallet that they bring along during their route.

Once the order has been completed, operators move it to the preload area (i.e. the floor), located directly in front of the loading docks. There, the pallets are sorted and grouped according to the order they correspond to or the transport route, to speed up their loading on the distribution vehicle.

Thanks to the pallet racks, Atacadão has achieved the maximum possible capacity and has benefited from the advantages offered by this storage solution, namely, capacity, versatility and accessibility.

Claudio Pierre Galvão - Purchasing and Services Manager at Atacadão
“We are very pleased with our Mecalux racks because of their superb quality, which makes them highly durable. In fact, we picked them because they enable us to streamline our daily tasks.”

Advantages for Atacadão

• Very versatile system: Atacadão manages multiple SKUs and products of different dimensions and characteristics. The pallet racks adapt to this diversity.
• Storage capacity: this company continues to grow and, therefore, to expand its storage capacity. With this warehouse, the company can accommodate 42,898 more pallets.
• Agile operations: 2,800 pallets are received daily, and another 3,220 are distributed. The racks facilitate the input and output of this large number of products.