Europa Road has bought 30 new forklifts worth £1.5m for its Dartford hub.

The 1.6 tonne CAT trucks have a triple stage mast to reach the warehouse’s five metre transit racking area, and will be delivered to the site in time for Christmas.

Rob Yates, transit warehouse manager at Europa’s Dartford DC, said: “Technology improves over five years, so the opportunity to replace the entire fleet early was a good one for us. Truck design and safety features also improve all the time. Our new trucks have enhanced safety features on them to keep our operatives safe, which were not available five years ago.”

Europa said that downtime would be reduced as less time would be required between repairs, while the new batteries will run longer than the older ones and will not need replacing as often.

Yates said: “The more efficient the better when it comes to fork lifts but in my opinion it’s the improved safety features that we were most interested in.

“These new vehicles have side safety lights for extra visibility to others and blue dot reverse lights which puts a dot on the floor two metres from the truck to indicate to others a truck is reversing – both excellent features which will make our warehouse environment as safe as possible.”