I have recently started working in a warehouse which distributes car parts. I will be producing risk assessments for storage of various parts and have been asked an interesting question which is: What is a safe height at which car batteries can be stored? I am informed that the pallets with them on are stacked with loose batteries and then shrink wrapped to hold them in place. The overall pallet weight might be anything from 600 to 900 kgs and our racks are 18 metres high. I have never heard of any regulations that might cover this, but can anyone give me any pointers? If any of you work in a warehouse where car batteries are stored in bulk, what is the maximum height you store them at. Also I would be interested to know whether or not you use deck boarding for safety reasons? I would be interested to hear from any of you who have any experience of high racking and storage of car batteries.

To me this isn’t a H&S issue, it’s more a business issue, of maximising profit where possible, H&S is just an off shoot. Why store, anything, which has the potential to damage other stock in a position such that it can? If you have a product that can leak and devalue or damage other saleable product, store it somewhere it can’t. That way if there is an issue the company does not loose revenue & thus profit from the damaged stock, and, no insurance claim for stock damage to worry about. Now if this was raw meat in a refrigerator, which if the packaging leaked could contaminate other food stuffs, is the recommendation not to store it at the lowest possible point in the fridge? To me, same principal. Store the batteries at ground level, safe, no chance of damaging other stock, put stuff that could leak, but not damage batteries above it, then dry goods that can’t leak from there up as it were. I would be thinking of the same storage method for brake fluid TBH.