Metal Stillages & Cages: A Warehouse Safety & Security Guide

A warehouse has two assets it cannot afford to lose: the people who work in it and the goods that move through it. Get the handling equipment wrong and both are exposed at once — a poorly loaded stillage can injure an operative and write off a pallet of stock in the same incident. Get it right and the same units protect your team, keep stock secure, and make audits straightforward.

This guide sets out how well-specified metal stillages and cages improve both safety and security across a UK warehouse, and what to look for when you specify them.

Stillages vs cages: what the difference means for safety

The two are often lumped together, but they solve slightly different problems and it pays to be precise when you specify.

• Stillages are rigid steel bases — usually with fork pockets and often stackable — built to carry, store and move a defined load. Mesh or sheeted sides contain the contents; a certified lifting stillage adds tested lifting points for crane or hoist handling.
• Cages prioritise containment and access control. Weldmesh walls keep small or loose items in, keep hands and fingers out, and can be fitted with doors and locks to restrict who reaches the contents.

Choosing between them — and between mesh, sheeted or part-clad sides — is a safety decision as much as a storage one. Our buyer’s and design guide walks through how load, contents and handling method should drive that choice.

Protecting people: safe design, loading and handling

Most warehouse incidents involving handling equipment come down to a few recurring causes: overloading, unstable stacking, contents shifting in transit, or units being lifted when they were never rated to be lifted. Good stillage design designs those risks out.

Contain the load so nothing can fall or slide

Sides should be specified to suit the contents. Weldmesh with a suitable aperture stops components working loose; solid sheeted sides suit fine, sharp or hazardous items where mesh gaps would let material escape. Where units are stacked, a positive stacking feature (locating feet, spigots or a defined footprint) stops the stack drifting. Our guide to keeping stillages stable covers safe stacking heights, floor loading and collapse prevention in detail.

Rate the equipment and mark it clearly

Every unit that carries a load should carry clear duty information. Where products require it, we load test units and their lifting points and provide certification and SWL/WLL/MGW/Tare identification. In plain terms:

• SWL / WLL — the safe/working load limit the unit is rated to carry.
• MGW — maximum gross weight, i.e. the unit plus its contents.
• Tare — the empty weight of the unit itself.

Marking these on the unit means operators, fork-lift drivers and crane slingers can all see the limits at a glance rather than guessing.

Handle lifted equipment with extra care

Anything hoisted by a crane or lifted overhead deserves particular attention, because a failure at height endangers everyone below. Lifting accessories and lifted stillages fall under LOLER 1998 (the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations), which require suitable equipment, thorough examination and competent operation. Our LOLER compliance guide explains where stillages sit within those duties and what “thorough examination” means in practice.

Compliance: the standards that actually apply

UK handling equipment sits inside a clear regulatory framework. Rather than a vague nod to “the regulations”, it helps to know which ones do what:

• UKCA marking — the UK conformity marking for products placed on the market in Great Britain, indicating the unit meets the relevant applicable requirements.
• PUWER 1998 — the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations. Any equipment provided for use at work must be suitable, maintained and used only by people who have had adequate information and training. See our PUWER guide.
• LOLER 1998 — applies specifically to lifting operations and lifting equipment, including certified lifting stillages.
• Relevant BS/ISO standards — British and international standards for materials, welding and construction, applied where they are relevant to the design.

We design and build to these standards and can supply the documentation to prove it. If lifting or load-rating is involved, put the technical detail in front of us early — our guide on giving us the right information for an accurate quote shows exactly what we need.

Training, inspection and safe operation

Equipment is only as safe as the way it is used. Two things keep it that way over its working life:

• Information and instructions. Where appropriate we provide information packs on how to load, stack and safely operate our stillages, trolleys and other equipment — supporting the training duty PUWER places on employers.
• Routine inspection. Units should be checked regularly for damage, weld cracks, distortion and worn lifting points, and taken out of service if they fail. Building an inspection routine into your safe systems of work catches problems before they become incidents; our stillage safety guide covers handling, training and incident reporting in full.

Securing stock: keeping the right people out

Alongside safety, stillages and cages are a practical way to protect valuable or sensitive stock. Containment and access control can be built in when the unit is made, rather than bolted on as an afterthought.

• Enclosure. Solid sheet cladding or small-aperture weldmesh prevents access to the contents and keeps stored items out of sight. A dedicated security stillage is purpose-built for anti-tampering, theft and damage prevention where goods are high-value or attractive to opportunists.
• Locks and bolts. Doors can be fitted with locks, and drop-in or cable-operated shoot bolts secure units during storage and transit. Lockable site stillages are a common choice where equipment is left unattended on site.

Identification and stock control

Clear identification keeps goods moving to the right place and makes stock takes and audits far quicker. Options include:

• Card holders, ID plates and labels. Fittings such as an A5 industrial label holder, along with ID plates and stencilling, let you mark contents, destinations and storage locations legibly and durably.
• RFID tags. Where you run stock-control software, RFID tags can be fitted to locate individual stillages and log them in and out automatically — useful across larger sites or where units travel between locations.

You’ll find the full range of holders, plates and add-ons under our stillage consumables, and the wider range of moving equipment under material handling equipment.

Specify it once, get it right

Safety and security aren’t features you add later — they come from specifying the right unit for the load, the contents and the way it will be handled. As a UK manufacturer we can build to your exact requirements, load test where needed and supply the certification to back it up.

Tell us what you’re storing and how it moves, and we’ll recommend the right specification. Get a quote or contact our team to talk it through.