Ready to roll

Based in Cheshire, Slater Harrison & Co operates from an old paper mill; production and storage of raw materials and finished goods takes place at various units within the footprint of the same facility.

Throughout the site Slater Harrison runs a fleet of 30 forklifts – including pedestrian operated stackers, reach trucks and gas- and electric- powered counterbalanced trucks – most of which are provided by Jungheinrich UK.

The most recent addition to the fleet is a gas-powered counterbalanced truck from Jungheinrich’s TFG Series 5 range. 

These trucks feature hydrostatic drive engines. The engines allow the trucks to accelerate quickly and changes in direction are sleek and smooth, making the TFG models suitable for applications which involve a lot of shuttling work – such as Slater Harrison’s.

In addition, due to hydrostatic drive technology having only a few mechanical components, the trucks are low maintenance and easy to service. As a result, truck downtime is kept to a minimum and whole life operating costs are low.

Slater Harrison’s new truck is fitted with a bespoke clamp attachment to handle incoming rolls of raw materials as well as finished products.

Incoming rolls of raw material – which can weigh anything up to 1.3t – are unloaded from trailers by the new forklift and delivered to one of Slater Harrison’s on-site storage facilities where they are block stacked or, if they are smaller in size and weight, put away in racking using a Jungheinrich ETV reach truck.

When required in the converting facility the raw material reels are delivered by the gas trucks and placed just inside the entry door where they are collected by a Jungheinrich pedestrian operated stacker – again fitted with a bespoke reel handling attachment – and transported directly to the conversion machinery.

Depending on the size of each batch, finished product leaves the production facility in reel or sheet form and is taken to the finished goods store using either the counterbalanced truck or a reach truck where it is stored to await onward delivery to Slater Harrison’s clients.

The new counterbalanced forklift has been acquired on a five year contract hire package. At the end of the five year period, Slater Harrison intends to purchase the machine and keep it as a back up vehicle. The company did this with the truck that the new TFG has replaced.