Linde Material Handling has won a five-year contract to supply Fowler Welch, a National third party logistics supplier, with a National fleet of 180+ new Lithium-Ion Fork Lift trucks, and Warehouse Equipment.

The New fleet of Lithium-Ion Equipment will serve sites in Spalding, Washington, Heywood, Teynham, and Hillsea.

The trucks include the T25SP ride-on pallet truck, R14 and R16HD reach trucks and E16P electric counterbalance forklift. Each truck is fitted with Linde’s fleet management system, ‘Connect:’ which obliges operators to carry out preshift safety checks to activate their truck, and enables warehouse managers to keep track of the service and maintenance status of their fleet. Powered by varying sizes of Linde branded lithium-ion batteries, the trucks come with a sophisticated battery management control system and full quality protection from Linde MH.
 
Paul Hone, Corporate Account Manager at Linde UK said: “We’ve worked with Fowler Welch for more than a decade during which time we have been able to present them with some of our latest technologies. We’re pleased they will now be investing in our newest range of lithium-ion trucks.

“We were able to demonstrate our trucks in action at our German factory in Aschaffenburg and provide trials of our trucks across three of Fowler Welch’s sites. This helped to highlight some of the truck’s unique benefits including decreased electricity and battery maintenance costs as a result of quicker charging. The batteries also do not need to be changed, meaning Fowler Welch will not lose any space in their warehouses to accommodate a battery changing area. We were also able to guarantee numerous health and safety benefits such as zero emissions or injuries caused from battery changing, all of which meant we were able to provide Fowler Welch with a cost effective long-term solution.”

Laurie Black, technical director at Fowler Welch said: “We were particularly impressed with the range of safety benefits Linde was able to offer on the new fleet of trucks, including the protection of the lithium-ion batteries which we were pleased were quality protected by Linde. Seeing some of the latest trucks being tested in our warehouses helped us to decide on our final order, and we’re looking forward to seeing the results of our more efficient fleet across our first two sites.”