Macneill chairman & CEO Pradip Churiwal

Macneill Engineering Ltd, a Calcutta-based forklift manufacturing company, has been appointed by Linde Material Handling Asia Pacific (LMA) to exclusively import Linde forklifts into India.

LMA managing director Klaus Schwarz and Macneill chairman and CEO Pradip Churiwal signed the agreement in Singapore on April 20.

Churiwal said the first consignment of forklifts was due to arrive in India in two weeks' time.

"Two container loads of Linde hand pallet trucks will be arriving. We will send 40 to 50 trucks to each of our 17 branches. It's a fast-selling item here and the pricing is attractive to the customer," he said.

Churiwal said that, within one year of him taking over the company from Williamson Magor Group, Macneill had started making profits on a month-to-month basis.

The company had accumulated losses totalling USD2.25 million, which Churiwal said he was confident of "wiping off" in three years' time.

"We managed to turn our business, due to fireproof forklift orders we mainly received from the Indian Oil Corporation at Panipat. Twenty have been dispatched and by June we expect to complete the order and have all 54 sent," he said (Forkliftaction.com News #200).

According to Churiwal, the top three forklift manufacturers in India are Macneill, Godrej and Voltas.