General Merchandise Warehouse - Definition & Meaning

Published in Operations and Supply Chain Terms by MBA Skool Team

What is General Merchandise Warehouse?

General Merchandise Warehouse is a warehouse is meant for goods which do not have a specific requirements of temperature. These are goods like apparels, manufacturing raw material, automobile components, industrial products, intermediary non-perishable products. They do not require any cold storage systems to regulate the temperature of the warehouse at lower levels. It forms the largest portion of the warehousing industry, in fact the cold storage warehousing is just one fifth of the general warehousing industry.

 

A warehouse is a facility made for storage of goods, which can be used by importers, exporters, transport businesses, customs, manufacturers, customs etc. They essentially are huge plain buildings possessing huge storage, located in industrial areas of towns, cities and villages. They have loading docks which can unload and load the goods brought in trucks. They can also carry out this functionality from railways, seaports and airports. They usually have their cranes and forklifts for transferring goods. Now, the goods stored in these warehouse can be anything, raw materials, spare parts, finished goods, and components, packing materials, finished goods from manufacturing, production and agriculture.


Depending upon what kind of material is to store in the warehouse, the specific requirements from a warehouse change. Where on one hand, storing of spare parts, raw materials and industrial components will have a different kind of requirement, the storage of perishable goods like cheese, fruits, milk products etc., need different kind of warehouse conditions to sustain.


The most relevant type of warehouse in this aspect are:

• General Merchandise Warehouse

• Cold Storage Warehouse

 

Cold Storage Warehouse: Cold Storage warehouses are used for preserving the agricultural products. The refrigerated storage helps to maintain a low temperature, thus diminishing the chances of rotting, sprouting and insect damage. The cold storage facility allows stabilization of market prices and a uniform distribution of goods both on the demand and the time basis. This is because the farmers now gain the ability and opportunity to produce cash crops to get good prices and at the same time consumers get perishable goods with lower rapid change of prices.

 

Hence, this concludes the definition of General Merchandise Warehouse along with its overview.

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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