Flexi Narrow Aisle Ltd - designer and manufacturer of the iconic Flexi brand of articulated forklift trucks - are currently celebrating their 50th anniversary.
Announcing the milestone, Donald Houston, Managing Director of Flexi Narrow Aisle, said: “Reaching this significant landmark is a source of great pride for everyone connected with the company. For half a century, Flexi Narrow Aisle has been driven by a commitment to design and manufacture ground-breaking warehouse trucks. During this time our build quality and exceptional levels of customer service have enabled us to meet the myriad challenges that come with a constantly evolving business landscape.”
Flexi Narrow Aisle began manufacturing its own range of warehouse stackers, order picking trucks and other unique specialist materials handling equipment from a former railway engine factory located at the heart of the Black Country in March 1976.
Following over a decade of pioneering research into the articulated truck concept by Flexi Narrow Aisle’s design team led by the company’s founder, Peter Wooldridge, the first version of the Flexi articulated forklift truck was launched in 1990.
Featuring a central pivot point that allowed the truck’s mast to be rotated independently of the machine’s main body, the Flexi represented a radical departure from traditional forklift engineering.
The pivoting mast meant that a Flexi could access pallet locations on both sides of a warehouse aisle without the need to turn the entire truck to face a different direction. This not only made the process of collecting and putting away palletised loads into a racked storage system easier, faster and safer but brought the added benefit of only requiring 1.6 metre wide aisleways in which to operate.
With both counterbalance and reach trucks needing at least 3.6 metres of aisle space between rack faces, the potential space savings that articulated truck technology offered meant users could increase their storage capacity by 50% by swapping their counterbalance or reach trucks for Flexis.
Furthermore, in addition to creating more storage space, the new Flexi truck’s ability to operate outside as well as inside the warehouse meant that it could unload an incoming delivery vehicle and transfer palletised loads directly to the racking scheme. So, with a Flexi, there was no need for companies to operate a counterbalanced forklift outside feeding a reach truck inside the store. Cutting out this double handling was not only more efficient but, by replacing two trucks with one Flexi, users achieved an instant saving in their materials handling fleet costs.
Since Flexi Narrow Aisle’s pioneering development of the articulated truck more than 15,000 Flexis have been sold to companies operating in some 75 countries around the world. The Flexi range continues to evolve with new models introduced to meet the requirements of customers operating in hugely diverse industries.
Donald Houston went on to say: “Our proven track record, longevity and stability have established Flexi Narrow Aisle as a company that its customers trust.
We are rightly proud of our past and the commitment to integrity that has always been Flexi Narrow Aisle’s hallmark, continues to drive everything that we do. And I am delighted to say that our passion for innovation and manufacturing excellence remains as strong as ever too, so we are looking to the future and our next 50 years with excitement and optimism.”
Flexi Narrow Aisle Ltd is one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of very narrow aisle (VNA) equipment. Narrow Aisle manufactures and markets the award-winning Flexi range of articulated forklift trucks. Flexi trucks, designed and manufactured at the company’s UK manufacturing plant are distributed in the UK and world-wide through a fully supported distributor network.