The forklift business is an increasingly competitive, global industry and, like most other industrial businesses, it lives and dies by its ability to be flexible and respond to the needs of the market quickly and efficiently. As companies seek to broaden their reach further from head office, transport by sea is now a major part of the machinery supply chain. DAMIEN TOMLINSON reports.


Sea transport is like the human bloodstream - it links all the organs of trade and industry, and without it, much of the industrialised world would simply not exist. Transport by sea has been with us for as long as civilisation, but it has really taken off with mass production. In the car industry, for example, compact, easily-replicated products allow companies to export their products to new and interesting markets without the need for new manufacturing plants, staff or other associated costs.

For car makers these days, exporting a shipment of their latest models by sea is second nature. Roll the cars up onto a car carrier, ship the vehicles to their destination, roll them off. Simple, you might say for shipping 1000 identical Volvos, but what happens when your products are non-standard in height and weight, as is the case for many of the products of materials handling manufacturers?

Depending on the product, methods of shipment vary from forklift manufacturer to manufacturer. For warehouse truck makers, the process has become almost as standardised as the car industry, but for others, whose product ranges include everything from "conventional" forklifts to rough terrain machines and ship-to-shore (STS) cranes, the shipment process is complex.

Take Kalmar Industries for example: a big name in materials handling, based in Ljungby, Sweden, with manufacturing locations in Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, the USA and China. Kalmar has two plants in Sweden: Ljungby, where it makes forklifts from 5-30 tonne capacities; and Lidhult, five kilometres away, where it builds forklifts from 33-50 tonnes capacity.

Kalmar builds rubber-tyred and rail-mounted gantry cranes, terminal tractors and straddle carriers in Tampere, Finland; its STS cranes and automated stacking cranes come from Rotterdam in the Netherlands; and its plants in Ottawa, Kansas, USA, and Shanghai, China, build terminal tractors.

Apart from these locations, sister company Bromma supplies spreaders for Kalmar's container handling machines from factories in Stockholm, Sweden, Ipoh, Malaysia and Tampere. Cabins for the machines are built in Finland, and the company also has a welding factory in Estonia.

According to spokesman Bengt Larsson, most of the company's products originate in Scandinavia, yet 95 per cent of the products made there are exported around the world. This means the Kalmar shipping department is a well-oiled machine.

The Kalmar manufacturing process is reactive, meaning customers don't go to their dealer and pick up a machine off the floor. Much of the manufacturing is done to order, which means potentially huge lead times for specialised machines.

"We do this because customers rarely want a standard machine and this is a safe way of manufacturing," Larsson said. "There is almost always some customisation required to adapt the machine to the customer's requirements, so making machines to order reduces spare stock on hand."

The majority of Kalmar's forklift range is transported by RoRo ship and loaded onto trucks at their destination. But for the bigger machines, such as the company's reach stackers, straddles and STS cranes, some assembly is carried out at the destination.

If you order a straddle carrier from Kalmar today, it will arrive on a flat-rack, or open-air container, partially assembled for transport. The machine is open to the elements on its voyage from abroad, but Kalmar wraps up the machine's weather-sensitive components prior to shipping.

Reach stackers are shipped in three parts: the chassis and cabin, the container spreader, and the boom. STS cranes, Larsson says, are shipped by special barge in varying stages of completeness, depending on the customer's proximity to the manufacturing location.

Larsson says the shipping process is very low-risk in terms of machinery damage in-transit, but the risks increase at the dockside during the unloading process, where "the human factor" comes into play.

Shipping, for a company like Kalmar, would represent a major cost consideration. So Kalmar, which sells 48 per cent of its machines in Europe and has, as at September, booked EUR621.1 million (USD811.1 million) in sales this year, must be doing something right.

Some companies don't have to rely on export as much as Kalmar. If you manufacture in your home country, which also consumes most of your products, then export assumes a lower profile. For example, Manitou is a well-known French brand in rough terrain and telescopic forklifts. It sells 35 per cent of its products into its domestic market from its home base in Ancenis, in the west of the country.

The company has manufacturing plants in France, Italy, Germany and the USA, and exports its Manitou (rough-terrain masted forklifts), Maniscopic (telescopic forklifts), MRT (rotating, telescopic trucks), Maniaccess (aerial work platforms), Manitransit (truck-mounted forklifts), Maniloader (articulated and swing-shovel loaders) and Manilec (hand pallet trucks, stand-on reach trucks, etc) ranges worldwide.

Manitou's largest markets are France, the UK and Germany, respectively, and these countries monopolise the majority of the company's 15,000 unit annual output. Manitou, which turned over EUR681.6 million (USD890.1 million) last year, has just celebrated the building of its 200,000th machine, and is currently producing 15,000 machines each year.

Manitou was established in 1957, and this year took a 15 per cent stake in US agricultural equipment maker Gehl (Forkliftaction.com News #168).

Spokesman Stuart Walker said the majority of Manitou's range was containerised for overseas shipping. Machines were driven into containers before shipment and transported by rail or road at their destination country before pre-delivery detailing by the selling dealer.

The physical dimensions of Manitou's rough-terrain machines above 4.5-tonne capacity, and its forklifts above 7-tonne capacity, were generally too large for containers, and so the machines were driven onto multi-storey RoRo transport ships. Walker said the machines were not wrapped or otherwise protected during shipping, but were always "below deck" and not exposed to the elements.

In contrast to the Kalmar ethos, Manitou's machines are supplied to its dealers, and customers could pick up a machine from the showroom floor without having to wait for their order to arrive. This has a major effect on the company's lead times, which has had a positive effect on the balance sheet, Walker said.

"The machines are more standardised, so we can comfortably project the demand for certain models and order them in advance," Walker said.

Companies may be driven by a manufacturing policy of "just in time" or "off the shelf". Regardless of manufacturing philosophy, wherever the customer is located these days, they want their product delivered ASAP, thereby ensuring that safe, reliable and low cost transportation and storage will always be key elements of the corporate balance sheet.

TASK Australia has provided a list of the "dos and don'ts" of forklift storage and transport. Click here to read it.

Forkliftaction.com News would like to thank the companies that have helped us compile this month's feature.