Factory mezzanine floors are a very popular solution for businesses of all shapes and sizes who are looking to create or increase their office, storage or production space within their warehouse. With multiple benefits, including their quick to install and cost effective nature, it’s easy to see why.

We’ve put together a list of the numerous benefits that a factory mezzanine floor can bring to your business premises and in turn, your company’s operations. From the possibility of doubling the space available to you, through to their bespoke and flexible nature. Read on to find out why installing a mezzanine floor into your factory premises, can help to take your business to the next level.

One of the main benefits of a mezzanine floor structure, is the fact that it can provide you with additional ‘floor’ space within the existing footprint of your factory building. Potentially, you could double or in some cases, triple the space available to you and your business’ operations by installing a mezzanine floor.

By creating more space above head height, you also retain the floor space below the mezzanine, allowing you to potentially create office space above your production area or vice versa. For those of you, who require storage space for your slow moving stock, by utilising a storage mezzanine floor, you can neatly store them within your factory and easily access them when you need to.

With the additional space that a mezzanine floor can bring, you can create more production lines, grow your team or even create specialised facilities, such as temperature controlled rooms or sound proofed areas for noisy machinery. All of this allows you to expand your business quickly and increase your profits without the stress of moving to a new factory.

There are so many possibilities with a mezzanine floor and the fact that they can fit into the existing footprint within your warehouse and take up virtually no space, makes them a very popular solution for businesses across the country.

One of the costliest and most stressful things that any business may have to go through is a relocation to a new premises. Not only do you potentially have to purchase a building or increase your monthly rental payments, but there are also multiple other costs involved within the process too. Like the fitting out of your new premises to your requirements and potentially purchasing new equipment and growing your team.

By choosing to go down the route of having a mezzanine floor designed to your exact requirements installed within your factory instead, you can potentially avoid the need to relocate and at the same time, avoid an increase to your monthly rent, mortgage payments or business rates. 

This allows you to create the facilities that your business needs within your existing factory building instead. Avoiding the stress of a relocation and any downtime that may bring. 

A mezzanine floor installation provides you with a great opportunity to look at how your business currently works and see where any improvements could be made, especially in regards to its workflow and the layout of your factory. 

By working with a mezzanine floor design expert, you can transform the look and feel of your premises and in turn, your business itself. It can provide you with a blank slate, an opportunity to streamline your business. For example, you could bring all of your team underneath one roof, by installing an office mezzanine floor solution within your manufacturing warehouse.

This will help to bring synergy to your team, allowing them to work more closely together and providing them with the opportunity to solve any potential issues quickly and in person, rather than over the phone or via email. 

Another great way to take advantage of a mezzanine floor is by storing your products up in the air. By utilising the space above head height, you get back your ground floor space. Potentially allowing you to implement more production lines, or even create an office space for your team. There are a number of options when it comes to a mezzanine floor based solution.

A major plus point when it comes to utilising a mezzanine floor within your factory, is their truly bespoke nature. You can create whatever facilities you require with the flexibility that they provide. 

From meeting rooms and breakout areas that help to encourage collaboration, through to open plan office spaces for large teams or smaller office spaces for your warehouse manager, whatever your requirements, an office mezzanine floor can provide you with the solution. 

If your business is in need of additional production or manufacturing space, a mezzanine floor can provide you with the solution. They can facilitate the creation of additional production lines, heavy manufacturing machinery or even the creation of specialist clean rooms. No matter if you choose to utilise the space above or below the mezzanine floor, they are ideal for businesses where manufacturing is integral to their operations.

They were also traditionally used for storage purposes and that’s still a great use for them today. There are a number of accessories available to ensure that you can easily add and remove your stock to and from the mezzanine floor, such as a number of pallet gate designs, product chutes, conveyor belts and even product lifts.

You are only really limited by the size of your warehouse itself, both horizontally and vertically. If you have the head height, you can take advantage of a double or even triple mezzanine floor design. A mezzanine could also be designed to take up the entire footprint of your factory floor, essentially providing you with another level within your premises.

Whatever works for you, you can achieve it with a mezzanine floor.

Within your business plan you will anticipate further growth for your business in the future. By incorporating a mezzanine floor into your future plans (whether you need one right now or not) you can future proof your premises and potentially avoid a disrupting installation in the months or years to come.

A lot of growing businesses take advantage of the fact that mezzanine floors can be designed to evolve as the business itself evolves. As a business owner, you will have factored in potential areas of growth as your profits increase. This could be additional machinery to manufacture more products or an expansion to your office space to accommodate your growing team. The cost effective and quick to install nature of a mezzanine floor allows you to plan for these eventualities.

For example, you could have the skeletal steel shell of a mezzanine floor installed within your premises above any office, storage or production space that you may be looking to create. This enables your chosen mezzanine floor contractor to return in the future to easily install the chipboard along with the rest of your desired solution.

Installing a mezzanine floor above existing facilities can be difficult at times, so by thinking ahead, you have already removed this obstacle, which in turn ensures minimal disruption to your business when they come back to finish off the job.

Due to their flexible nature, mezzanine floors allow you to adapt to changes that you may have not anticipated too. For example, you may initially only require space to store your stock, along with a small office space on top of your mezzanine floor. But as your business grows and its requirements change, you may find that you need additional office or storage space. 

By working together with an expert mezzanine floor designer, you can ensure that your mezzanine floor is designed to enable those changes above and/or below your mezzanine quickly and efficiently.

Due to their modular nature, offices can be dismantled to provide you with additional storage space or even added onto, to create additional office space where you once stored your products. 

Mezzanine floors provide you with the flexibility you need as a growing business, not locking you into one solution or the other. But rather, providing a hybrid solution that evolves alongside your business.

We talked earlier about how installing a mezzanine floor is cost effective when compared with the costs of moving premises. However they are also cost effective when compared to other space creating solutions such as a block and beam structure. Mezzanines are generally a cheaper solution by the square metre and provide a much more flexible solution from a design perspective too. 

By utilising a mezzanine floor solution within your existing factory, instead of moving to a new premises, you can take advantage of the additional space by employing more people. Allowing you to grow your business for a fraction of the cost of moving.

Not only that, but if you are looking to move premises, by considering a mezzanine floor solution within your new factory, you can potentially choose a smaller premises than you may have thought you needed. This will in turn, immediately reduce the rent and rates you were expecting to pay. 

By thinking about the 3D space rather than the 2D footprint, you can utilise the head height to implement a mezzanine floor solution to double or triple your available space within the footprint of the building.

On top of that, there are also finance options to take advantage of. These can allow you to spread the cost and pay monthly for your mezzanine floor solution. The additional space can provide you with the opportunity to increase your profits quickly and in no time at all, your monthly payments may well look like a very good investment. 

When constructing a mezzanine floor into an empty warehouse premises, the project is fairly straightforward. There are no considerations needed to minimise downtime or work around your employees. However if you are creating new space within your existing operational factory, it’s a different story.

Don’t worry however, as any mezzanine floor expert worth their salt, will still ensure minimal disruption to your business operations. They will design the actual mezzanine structure around your machinery or production line layout’s for example and when it comes to the actual installation, they can work evenings or weekends if required to do so. 

In most cases you won’t even need to move your heavy machinery. Your chosen mezzanine floor contractor should protect them whilst the build takes place. They will also ensure that deliveries are scheduled around your busy times to ensure they don’t get in your way.

All employees still working on site during the build will also be inducted to site and made aware of what works are taking place. Walkways will be created and work areas safely fenced off with signage to inform everyone of the dangers and best practices.

This information will all be presented to you ahead of the build stage, within the programme of works. This will ensure that there are no surprises once the construction phase commences.

As mezzanine floors are quick to install too, with the ability to install 50-60 square metres per day, your business will be back up and running at full speed in no time at all. 

Factory mezzanine floors can be designed to take very heavy loads. As standard, a mezzanine floor designed for office use is designed to withstand 360kg per square metre, whilst those designed for storage or production use can be built to hold up to 500kg per square metre.

However, a mezzanine floor can be designed to take up to a ton per square metre, which is ideal if you plan to utilise the floor for production or manufacturing involving heavy machinery. However this will usually require you to make alterations to the concrete floor. 

You can find out how strong your existing concrete floor is by obtaining the warehouse slab details, which are often found in the operations and maintenance manual that would have been provided when the building was first constructed. If you are leasing, you can request this information from your landlord.

However if you can’t find this information, you can arrange for a core test sample to be taken, Your mezzanine floor contractor should help you to arrange this. 

Mezzanine floors can accommodate shelving, racking, office furniture and even a half ton pallet loaded onto a pallet truck. Your mezzanine floor contractor will just need to know exactly what you intend to use it for, to ensure that it’s designed correctly and can withstand the weight load required.

Any mezzanine floor designer should design the solution around your business and the great thing is, that mezzanine floors easily facilitate this. For example power and data cables can be situated within the suspended ceiling void. Allowing you flexibility with your office layout on top of the mezzanine floor, because data points can be installed anywhere. 

Or you can attach power cables to the mezzanine columns themselves, providing nearby power for your machinery or operatives that are working in your factory underneath the mezzanine. The column grid itself will also be designed around your existing or proposed layout in the area below the mezzanine floor. Maximising the column grid design to save you money and also reduce the installation time, with less steel involved.

After all, there is no need for unnecessary columns within your factory mezzanine floor design. You want the design to be as clean as possible to maximise the space available to you. To enable this, mezzanine columns can be hidden within walls or could even be integrated into your existing shelving layout for example. 

Your chosen mezzanine floor design expert should be able to provide you with a solution that blends in with your working environment and is as inconspicuous as possible.

You may be concerned that you’ll spend all this money on improving your current premises with a mezzanine floor and then have to start all over again in your new factory if you move premises. However the good news is that a mezzanine floor is like a large scale Meccano set, made up of the main steels, purlins, columns and the bracing, and as such can be easily dismantled and rebuilt at your new factory premises if you were to move. However there are of course caveats to that.

The more bespoke the design, the harder the relocation process. You may need your mezzanine design expert to take another look at the design and add to or reconfigure the existing steel layout to suit your new factory premises. However the great news is that mezzanines can be adapted fairly easily, so chances are that your mezzanine can be reused within your new factory. However not all mezzanine contractors offer a relocation service, so be sure to ask about this upfront, if you have an inkling that you may require this service.

So as you can see, there are many benefits to installing a mezzanine floor into your factory premises. From the fact that they are a cost effective solution right through to their bespoke nature. You’re sure to find the right mezzanine floor solution for your business.

Here at Nexus we have nearly fifteen years of experience when it comes to designing and installing mezzanine floor solutions to help transform businesses of all shapes and sizes. So if you’re looking for additional space to store your products or you need office space to house your growing team, we can help.

Get in touch with us today either via our live chat, contact form, calling us on 0113 831 3303 or emailing us at [email protected]. Whatever your needs, we’ll work with you to create the right solution for you and your business.