William McHenry is the owner of McHenry Distillery, which rests on the side of Mount Arthur located on the beautiful Tasman Peninsula. He talks about his journey growing the family-run business and how forklifts have helped him expand his operations.

We are Australia's southern-most whisky distillery. Our family moved from Sydney to Tasmania to set up the McHenry’s distillery in 2010. We felt that Tasmania had the ideal conditions for making whisky: an abundant supply of pure, soft water, plump, ripe, malting barley and the cleanest air in the world.

Before starting the distillery, I was a marketing executive for Pfizer, working at the Manhattan head office and living in Connecticut. We eventually moved back to Sydney to bring up our kids. One day, my neighbour made the comment that with a name like William Fraser McHenry, I should learn the bagpipes and make whisky. I fell in love with the idea and fast forward, here we are. 

We are soon going to release our 10-year-old single malt whisky, so it really feels we have finally made it.

Production of whisky (and other spirits) requires a lot of bulk handling of ingredients and packaging materials. We receive malted barley in bulk bags, which are then forked off the delivery truck. We also receive bagged barley from Scotland (palletised in 20 Kg lots). Bottles are received in pallet lots, and we also ship our orders to the mainland and overseas in pallet lots. A forklift gets heavy use here!

We first started with a manual pallet mover. We had that for a few years before purchasing a second-hand forklift in frustration.

We now have two forklifts, but only one is working. Our first forklift was a second-hand, 40-year-old Hyster. It cost AUD3,000 and after about six months, it blew a head gasket. We fixed that and then the starter motor went, so this little old girl is currently waiting for some love and attention. Luckily, we bought a Toyota 25, which is our current workhorse.

From a pallet mover and a forklift, we are now considering a third forklift, but we will probably go to an electric order picker/stacker.

We have grown our business with ‘sweat equity’ and run the business lean, so we typically look at second-hand equipment. However, with our growing size, we will now look into leasing or purchasing new. 

The cost of new equipment has been a big hurdle. Another challenge is that a large proportion of our work area is non-concreted, so using the forklift during wet weather can be problematic. Our plan is to extend our concrete so we can run our forklifts anywhere.

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