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STORE EQUIPMENT FROM PAGE 55 Give your shelf life During the past 12 months, the pandemic has caused a change in the frequency of shopper’s grocery trips, with fewer visits, but also increased per-visit spend, due to the greater volume of goods purchased. With larger volumes removed from shelves, retail staff are spending significant time facing up displays to ensure goods remain attractive to shoppers. This increased handling increases the risk of Covid transmission, but could be eliminated with the latest development in retail shelving solutions. Flowsell, a supplier of shelving and merchandising solutions designed for easy handling, improved workflow and hygiene control, has been working with customers across Australia in retail stores, pharmacies and hospitals. National Sales Manager Ray Ciseau spoke to Convenience World about the three primary functions of in-store display equipment. “All display equipment must offer high visibility,” he said. “Products must catch the customer’s attention and be easy to identify. “Equipment must also allow easy access to the products, enabling customers to select the product of their choice. In addition, safety is important, so products should be displayed at a height appropriate to their weight, with heavier products lower and nothing so high it can’t be reached.” To improve the customer’s retail experience, Mr Ciseau recommends considering the retail trend of adding rollers to existing shelves. “Having rollers on shelves has generally only been done in fridge settings, but now rollers can be added to almost any shelf on the main retail floor,” he said. “Rollers automatically face up products when stock is removed, giving customers good visibility and easy access to the product of their choice. They also offer a significant saving in labour costs with staff able to serve customers instead of continually tidying or facing shelves. “Retailers considering the purchase of retail shelving would be wise to explore the advantages of a roller system or bottle slide system over traditional flat shelves. It’s also very important for a shelving system to have multi-angle brackets as this allows the placement of shelves at a gravity feed angle suitable for rollers.” Flowsell supplies a gravity feed bottle slide system, a roller system and a custom-made milk roller shelf and advertises a bottle slide that can be customised to fit any size of existing shelf. Plastic with a plus tick Specialist recycled plastics manufacturer Supercart is on a roll, having answered the call for sustainability and Australian made products. Having launched its range of 100 per cent Australian recycled plastic shopping trolleys into the Australia and New Zealand markets two years ago, it has now followed up with 30lt hand baskets made from 100 per cent Australian recycled plastic. “We’ll soon be releasing our new cup/drink holder, too, also made entirely from 100 per cent Australian recycled plastic,” Supercart Business Unit Manager Theodoor Steeman said. The cup holder is designed to attach to supermarket trolley handles and comes in a variety of styles with options for messaging to be added prior to the cup holder being attached to the trolley handle. There are also variants with no messaging window and options to either retain any spillage in the holder or allow self- draining, based on the needs of the store environment. Make a clean break The final product to catch our interest is an innovative solution to maintaining cleanliness and hygiene as we manage the threat of Covid transmission and consider future needs. AOPEN Partnerships and Marketing Manager Joy Chua shares details of the latest advances in hygiene management. “Today, enterprises face increased governance in cleaning and audits in their cleaning practices,” she said. “However, cleaning is not just for Covid but, moving forward, also addresses a heightened awareness and need for cleanliness in light of E. coli and the increased risks presented with touch screens and surfaces. “Due to the impact of Covid-19, businesses and workplaces, including retail locations, must now comply with far stricter hygiene standards. In addition to any existing regular cleaning schedules, specific surfaces must be cleaned when they reach the clean-time interval, human proximity, or contact thresholds.” This regulatory process sounds complex and hard to manage, but may be achieved with SAMi, the Surface Awareness Management API, from AOPEN’s sister company, meldCX. According to meldCX, SAMi is “digitising clean-up in public spaces, using artificial intelligence and computer vision to turn manual ‘clipboard and checklist’ cleaning procedures into an efficient, digitally driven and monitored process”. SAMi works by monitoring touched surfaces and generating a heat-map to pinpoint specific areas that need to be cleaned, while also alerting businesses to precisely when and where extra cleaning is required. The system then monitors the cleaning activity in real time as it is carried out by the cleaning crew, to help ensure compliance. 56 CONVENIENCE WORLD JAN/FEB, 2021