Many South African ingot plants know this scene well: the yard looks “full to the brim”, forklifts snake around searching for paths, and safety inspectors keep criticising “irregular stacking and insufficient aisles”. Talking about expanding land is expensive, so automatic stacking becomes attractive: can we “stretch” yard capacity without building new space?

Before you choose an automatic system, get three numbers roughly clear:

1. How much are you really storing now?
   Even a simple estimate — effective stacking area × average stack height → tons per square metre — will reveal how low your current utilisation might be.

2. What’s the gap between your best and worst stack?
   Measure the “best-looking stack” and the “worst-looking stack” your teams create. The larger the difference, the more space you are wasting.

3. How wide and how messy are your forklift aisles?
   Trace real forklift routes on a sketch. You will often find aisles squeezed simply because ingot bundles vary too much in size.

The real value of a gantry ingot stacking system is to turn each ingot bundle into a “standard-size block”, and then design the yard as a grid with fixed aisles. When suppliers like Wuxi Wondery Industry Equipment prepare a proposal, they typically define pallet size, layers, stack height and yard layout together, instead of only saying “this machine stacks fast”.

Once bundle sizes are unified and aisle widths are fixed, you’ll see more tons stored on the same footprint, smoother forklift movements and much easier safety inspections — benefits that go far beyond just saving a few operators.