The Flexi HiMAX forklift

Saudi Arabian building materials group Al-Fozan has ordered five Flexi HiMAX articulated forklifts to work in its Qatar and Bahrain high-bay warehouses.

Aiman Hawari, the project's principal consultant from the Al-Subeai Group, said the articulated truck concept was "relatively unknown" in the Middle East.

"But it is clear it offers significant advantages in a high-bay warehousing environment, especially in the Gulf region where development land costs are on par with, if not higher than, those in western Europe," Hawari said.

The forklifts, commissioned in June from Narrow Aisle, will retrieve and put away pallets at heights up to 12 metres. Each warehouse facility has a floor area of more than 10,000 square metres. The Qatar facility is in a rapidly-developing industrial zone while the Bahrain facility is at the new Sitrah Island development, a Narrow Aisle Ltd statement said.

John Maguire, Narrow Aisle's sales and marketing director, said the company had been supplying very narrow aisle forklifts to the Middle East for more than 30 years.

"The current market is not large. [But] due to growth in logistics of at least 15 per cent per annum, there is an opportunity for suitable equipment that can work under local conditions. The GDP of the Gulf region has grown by more than eight per cent for each of the last three years.

"This is our first order in Qatar and Bahrain but we have been supplying Dubai and Saudi Arabia for some years," he said.

The order value was USD350,000, including service and parts contracts for three years.