UK – It seems the Midlands is rapidly regaining its premier status as Britain’s key manufacturing region when, hot on the heels of the news that Jaguar cars has embarked on a new investment programme for its latest generation of aluminium bodied vehicles, another West Midlands based outfit, fork lift truck maker Flexi Narrow Aisle, has announced its sustained export success puts it on course for an annual sales record performance.

Ironically much of the demand for the company’s articulating body trucks has been from the automotive industry. The thinner corridors required to support the Flexi trucks operations are ideal for an industry where stock is stacked as economically as possible and withdrawn and replenished at a rapid rate. John Maguire, Flexi Narrow Aisle’s sales and marketing director sets out his thinking behind the company’s success:

“Because of its design and operator visibility, the Flexi is perfectly suited to working alongside order picking staff without creating a health and safety issue, which makes it ideally suited for use in the e-fulfillment industry, while we have been promoting the Flexi concept at European trade shows for a number of years and our efforts are really paying off now.

“At Flexi we focus all our energies on making our established articulated forklift range more productive and more customer friendly. The Flexi articulated truck concept is now established technology. We take a mature and measured approach to product design and by keeping to our established and successful core design principles with feedback from our extensive customer base we have been able to develop quality products that offer ever higher throughput efficiency and safety and the lowest running costs.”

The future looks bright for a British firm with a slightly offbeat product and 2013’s positive sales forecast builds on Flexi’s success in 2012, when sales of the Flexi range of articulated forklifts were also up on the corresponding period 12 months earlier.