With the deadline for Brexit fast approaching, many businesses are looking to secure their plans for trade in the UK after March 29th. Linde Material Handling is just one of those businesses.

Linde serves more than 50,000 UK customers each year including the supply of trucks and equipment made in manufacturing bases across Europe and operates from 20 sales and service centres around the UK run centrally by its Basingstoke head office.

Like many other international suppliers in the industry, Linde is preparing for potential delays at the borders but has a range of solutions for its UK customers.

Mark Sullivan, vice president of business operations and systems at Linde Material Handling in the UK said: “At Linde, we established a project team within our business several months ago to assess the potential effects of Brexit on our UK customers. The team has worked hard to identify considerations, risks and mitigating actions to minimise any problems for customers.

“As a result of this project team we have invested further in out short-term rental fleet. The UK-based short-term rental fleet holds stock of more than 10,000 trucks – the widest range of trucks available in the UK market, with the capacity to help customers with any requirement, including heavy trucks. This provides existing customers and prospects with the confidence that their business will not be effected should we encounter any border delays.

“Furthermore, our distribution hub in Basingstoke holds the largest spare parts inventory in the UK material handling industry. This enables us to satisfy all customer and service engineer parts requirements with very short lead times. To minimise the risk of delays in receiving these parts from Germany, we have further increased our UK stock levels and are identifying alternative supply routes to mitigate any potential delays in distributing these parts.

“However, we do not expect border delays to make a significant impact on our orders because most of our trucks are built to order to customer specification, and therefore a lead time of several weeks is common.

“We are confident in our comprehensive approach to resolving any potential issues or delays caused by Brexit and want to reassure all of our UK customers that Linde is prepared for Brexit, no matter what.”