Australia's oldest Manitou unit is still in working order.

A competition held by Manitou Australia to find the oldest Manitou unit in Oceania has been won by South Australian-based NTP Forklifts Australia.

The contest, which ran over a year, involved all Manitou dealers in Oceania as a way of celebrating the past 40 years of supplying rough-terrain forklifts in the region.

Bob Vermeeren, sales account manager for NTP, won the $2,500 prize for his discovery of a MB 20C unit which is still in working order. It was manufactured in 1974 and imported into Australia in 1976, having been purchased at the time by Trotta Bros Building Company in Kapunda, South Australia.

Manitou Australia is a subsidiary of the Manitou group, which designs, assembles and distributes materials handling solutions intended for the construction, agriculture and industrial sectors.