Conference participants from Asia Pacific and Latin America viewed new products and watched forklift demonstrations at Linde's Xiamen facility.

Dealers and customers from the Asia Pacific and Latin America viewed new products and watched forklift demonstrations at the Linde Heavy Truck APLA Conference in Xiamen this month.

Linde (China) Forklift Truck Corp Ltd CEO CP Quek says while Linde is known for its smaller capacity forklifts in China, the conference enabled customers to see that the manufacturer is equally competent in serving their needs for larger capacity and container handling forklifts.

Participants viewed the production and assembly lines at Xiamen and, accompanied by forklift drivers, test drove heavy trucks in a demonstration area.

Linde presented on the development of the heavy truck business unit at the conference. Topics that were touched on included the effects of implementing a global service support infrastructure in the Asia Pacific and Latin America regions, local production of the 318 hydrostatic drive empty container handler that stacks eight high and the newly introduced 10-18 tonne and 18-32 tonne forklifts.

Linde Heavy Trucks has also extended its conventional drive series of locally manufactured heavy forklifts by adding a short wheelbase version (12 tonne and 15 tonne at 600mm/24 inch load centre) to the existing long wheelbase range (12 tonne and 16 tonne at 1,200mm/47 inch load centre).

The new products complement the 45 tonne reach stacker, which has also been upgraded to replace the previous series that had been produced in Xiamen for several years.

Linde (China) produced the first reach stacker in 2007, reached 100 units in 2009 and doubled that amount in 2010.