Martin McVicar (Combilift), Leo Varadkar Minister for Social Protection, Marc Tenart CEO Castorama, Geraldine Byrne-Nason (Irish ambassador to France) and Leo McAdams of Enterprise Ireland.

Combilift has signed a contract with Kingfisher, Europe's largest home improvement retailer, to deliver a mix of Aisle-Master VNA articulated forklifts and Combi-WR walk-behind machines to the company's French outlets during 2017.

The contract signing was witnessed by Leo Varadkar, Minister for Social Protection, and Geraldine Nason-Byrne, Ireland's Ambassador to France, during an Enterprise Ireland trade visit to France earlier this month.

Kingfisher operates over 1,100 stores and growing omni-channel operations across 10 countries in Europe and is represented in the UK by the B&Q and Screwfix brands.

The latest order is worth in the region of EUR1 million (USD1.1 million), and is a further boost for Combilift's Aisle-Master brand and its Combi-WR pedestrian models which are enjoying increasingly strong sales around the world in a wide variety of industry sectors. The trucks will be working in retail areas and back of store in Castorama and Bricot Dépôt stores and will be supplied by Aprolis, Kingfisher's rental and service partner in France.

Combilift MD Martin McVicar says: "The Kingfisher group fully understands the value of safer operations and space-saving storage that our products offer, and already operates 79 Aisle-Masters in France, as well as numerous ones in Castorama depots in Russia and Poland. We are very pleased to further cement our relationship with this prestigious company following the signing of this contract to supply a substantial number of new trucks this year."

Combilift is a specialist forklift and straddle carrier manufacturer producing a wide range of customised handling solutions designed for safe, space-saving and very productive handling of long and bulky loads.