Linde brand highly regarded among customers
7 Apr 2016
Customers order over 100,000 industrial trucks from Linde Material Handling for the first time in 2015
The 2015 fiscal year resulted in a very special record figure for Europe’s foremost industrial truck manufacturer, Linde Material Handling: For the first time in corporate history, customers ordered more than 100,000 forklift and warehouse trucks within one year. Shortly before year-end, it was the world’s leading manufacturer of wood-based panels and wood materials, Kronospan, who broke through the six-digit barrier with an order for three electric Linde E80/900 forklifts.
“We are very proud of this extraordinary sales result,” expounded a delighted Massimiliano Sammartano, Vice President of Sales & Service Marketing & Operations at Linde, a couple of days after the publication of the KION Annual Report 2015. “We see this record as appreciation by our customers for our ongoing commitment to offer them the best possible support with their materials handling tasks by providing just the right products, services and software solutions.”
Currently, diesel trucks are used exclusively at Kronospan’s factory in Burgos, northern Spain, but very soon three of them will be replaced by electric trucks having eight tonnes load capacity. One of the three is the 100,000th Linde forklift ordered last year. This is much to the delight of (left to right): Carlos Navarro, Sales Manager Kronospan, Roberto Martínez, Head of Logistics Kronospan and Francisco Lausín, Subdelegate of Linde Spain in the Area.
Currently, diesel trucks are used exclusively at Kronospan’s factory in Burgos, northern Spain, but very soon three of them will be replaced by electric trucks having eight tonnes load capacity. One of the three is the 100,000th Linde forklift ordered last year. This is much to the delight of (left to right): Carlos Navarro, Sales Manager Kronospan, Roberto Martínez, Head of Logistics Kronospan and Francisco Lausín, Subdelegate of Linde Spain in the Area.
The three new heavy electric forklift trucks in Kronospan’s fleet are destined for the company’s locations Burgos and Salas de los Infantes in northern Spain. There the Austrian company, a family-owned business with 14,000 employees worldwide and about 40 locations around the globe, operates a production line for melamine-faced panels. A total of 15 industrial trucks with load capacities of between 2.5 and 12 tonnes are used to transport wood fibre packages up to six metres long and 2.5 metres wide in-between the production area, drying chamber, rack warehouse and shipping area with truck loading bay.
“We chose electric forklifts for the first time because they are clean and quiet in operation, whilst offering almost the same performance capacity as diesel trucks,” says Carlos Navarro, Sales Manager at Kronospan. The trucks’ product features convinced Kronospan to choose Linde. “We trust in the safety, reliability, efficiency and productivity offered by the Linde brand and we certainly appreciate the company’s high standard of service.”
