Briggs Equipment UK has won a competitive tender to supply Finnforest UK Ltd with a fleet of forklifts.

Briggs Equipment UK has reduced Finnforest UK Ltd's materials handling fleet by nearly 40% in a highly competitive deal worth over GBP4 million(USD6.6 million).

After looking at nine materials handling suppliers, Finnforest, a supplier of Nordic timber and timber-based solutions, chose Briggs to replace its 120-strong fleet consisting of counterbalance forklifts and sideloaders.

Briggs supplied a fleet of 78 machines including 3 and 4.5 tonne Cat diesel counterbalance trucks, 27 Baumann sideloaders and five Combi multi-directional machines.

Briggs spokesman Scot Bullock says Finnforest wanted to reduce its fleet while maintaining or increasing work throughput.

The materials handling supplier helped Finnforest reduce its fleet by about 38% through "ongoing work with Finnforest" to improve fleet utilisation and use best practice, and making the Cat forklifts and sideloaders in its short-term fleet available to cover spikes in demand.

To win the tender, Briggs also committed to deliver 96% uptime for Finnforest, and guaranteed a three-hour service response time.

Mike Lomas, Finnforest's operations director, says Briggs offered a "total solution" to meet the company's needs. "This was an extremely competitive tender. Service support was critical. Our sites are geographically diverse, located across the UK. Briggs has 70 engineers within a 25-mile (40.2 km) radius of each of our sites."

Briggs' key account manager Sean Herrick says that the sideloaders were a critical part of the materials handling solution.

"Our short-term hire fleet includes 17 sideloaders and our long-standing relationship with Cooper SH means that we can fully support Finnforest's needs," he says.

Briggs' strategic partnership with Cooper SH enables it to have the support and parts back-up required for its sideloader fleet. Cooper also provides training via Baumann for Briggs' engineers at no cost.

The five-and-a-half year contract for Finnforest includes full maintenance and service, resident engineers, a single point of invoicing and bespoke modifications to the fleet to cut lifetime costs.