forklift technology Archives

Reliable Products, Attention to Specific Needs

Posted on 5 November, 202025 July, 2025 by David Priestman

Gruppo Grendi has developed a wide range of services by selecting reliable suppliers to support their daily activities. It is precisely from a need for reliability that Yale was selected to provide solutions to upgrade the efficiency of their warehouse, sited in Porto Canale, Cagliari. Opened in 2013, this innovative warehousing space in Sardinia is based in the rear port area, becoming one of the first companies with a warehouse operating close to the port basin.

With a history surpassing 190 years, the family owned Gruppo Grendi has seen six pioneering generations guide the group to their continued success today. Beginning as freight forwarders in 1828, the company has evolved to become a company of transporters, shipowners and terminal operators. It has transformed over two centuries to become a market leader in the transportation industry, by staying ahead with the latest transportation and technological trends

Tailored and reliable solutions

Trustworthiness and reliability have been the key factors which have guaranteed the partnership between Gruppo Grendi and Manitech, exclusive dealer for Sardinia. Manitech have supplied their customer with a fleet of 21 Yale® products from counterbalance trucks to order pickers through a long-term rental agreement. Long-term rental provides flexibility for their equipment choices and a tailored solution for Gruppo Grendi.

Coupled with the support and suggestions from Manitech, the Gruppo Grendi business has met their peak production for seasonal requirements while keeping their fleet size optimised for their daily needs. “Yale solutions have fulfilled our needs for a fleet working 24/7, with long battery duration for applications such as shelving storage and container loading,” explains Emanuele Demetrino, Gruppo Grendi Warehouse Manager.

“Gruppo Grendi is the undisputed leader in Sardinia for the logistics and transport sectors,” said Luca Pibiri, Sales and Marketing Manager of Manitech. “We proposed a wide range of Yale electric trucks, such as reach trucks, which offer all-round visibility and flexibility, horizontal and vertical order pickers, designed to allow quicker and more accurate order picking of materials, and platform pallet trucks, which optimise productivity in horizontal transportation and loading and unloading of vehicles. It has been an extraordinary success.”

Shelving, picking and loading: Yale solutions are the answer

For the all-electric truck fleet, Gruppo Grendi opted for ERP16 VT series electric counterbalanced forklift trucks, which are ideally suited for picking pallets and container loading. The three wheel electric forklift truck from the Yale VT series combines high performance and energy efficiency in a highly ergonomically advanced solution for medium to heavy duty applications, such as warehouse spaces. Thanks to a design which provides operators with manoeuvrability in confined spaces and a very comfortable working compartment, this product reduces back strain and minimises fatigue throughout shifts.

For second and third level picking up to around 5m, Gruppo Grendi chose Yale MO10E order pickers to enable the fulfilment of customer orders in a short timescale.

From the same series, Gruppo Grendi selected the Yale MO 25 low level order pickers for first and second level picking through the various warehouse aisles. Available with a fixed or lifting platform with independent forklift, the MO series also includes a scissor lift option for ground and occasional second level picking. This series of order picker lifts is ideal for cross docking and load shuttling as well as order picking in intensive and high throughput warehouse operations and horizontal transport over short and long distances.

Working effortlessly and efficiently even in confined spaces, the MP18-20 pedestrian powered pallet truck is designed around the needs of the operator and offers intelligent ergonomics and excellent manoeuvrability. Every component of the MP Series has been designed to provide exceptional reliability. Ideal for the light, medium and heavy duty indoor load handling Gruppo Grendi faces daily, the MP Series is up to 11% more productive when unloading and uses up to 7% less energy, tested against equivalent competitors trucks.

Gruppo Grendi selected the ride-on MP20X platform pallet trucks for their medium to heavy duty applications. The ride-on platform pallet truck is ideal for their cross docking and vehicle loading applications.

Completing the fleet of Yale products, the reach trucks from MR14 series were selected for shelving and order picking applications within the Sardinian warehouse. The robust heavy-duty mast design provides high residual capacities and stable load handling enabling faster put away and retrieval times.

• Gruppo Grendi offers a wide range of solutions for the logistics industry, with a 190 year heritage.
• Unicar-Yale dealer Manitech supplied 21 trucks for the Gruppo Grendi warehouse in Cagliari, from counterbalance trucks to order pickers.
• Trustworthiness and constant support have been the key factors that have guaranteed the partnership between Gruppo Grendi and Manitech.

The company has benefited from increased productivity and a greater return on their materials handling fleet investment. “We are totally satisfied with our decision to select Yale solutions,” says Emanuele. “Our Yale dealer, Manitech, understood our specific needs and provided the best solutions for our company. The reliability of the Yale brand, with equally reliable trucks, was enhanced by the constant service and attention to us as a customer. With our Yale trucks, we have been able to reduce our maintenance costs, which has resulted in time savings and an overall productivity increase,” concludes Emanuele.

More Yale news

New Addition to Turning Attachments Product Range

Posted on 4 November, 2020 by David Priestman

Forklift technology company B&B Attachments has introduced its new box turning attachment product (pictured). This high visibility unit with its robust construction is a low maintenance solution to handling and rotating a range of different box sizes.

This turning attachment is intended exclusively for the transport and lateral discharge of produce and Dolav boxes. It improves productivity through speed of rotation and elimination of dropped loads.

The specially positioned arms are fitted directly to a KAUP 360 degree rotating head. The arms secure the box load at both the top and sides, providing a safe and secure hold on the load. The arms are manually adjustable to handle different box sizes securely and are fully bushed to ensure smooth arm movement. There are several different types of top and side arm options available. The attachment can be supplied with a side arm on either one or both sides of the rotator.

This attachment can be fitted with a rear spacer to help the truck discharge produce closer to the centre of vehicles or when its receiving hoppers, ensuring safety and increased productivity with every lift. The arms can also be made as ‘quick release’ which allows the operator to revert to a standard rotator and forks in under two minutes, allowing all other palletised loads to be handled by the same forklift truck.

The rotator is rated 3200kg at 500mm load centre. All capacities, sizes and types are available through B&B Attachments.

New Addition to Turning Attachments Product Range

Posted on 4 November, 202025 July, 2025 by David Priestman

The rotator is rated 3200kg at 500mm load centre. All capacities, sizes and types are available through B&B Attachments.

Secure data exchange in the age of industry 4.0

Posted on 27 October, 202025 July, 2025 by David Priestman

Networked production processes and digital factories provide an important key to securing Germany’s competitiveness and innovative strength as a business centre. This is the subject of the lighthouse project IC4F – Industrial Communication for Factories – in which STILL has been significantly involved for almost three and a half years. The Hamburg-based intralogistics provider also hosted the final event, at which the results achieved with the project partners were presented on October 22nd.

For years, everyone has been talking about the future project Industry 4.0. However, essential tools for putting the new industry standard into practice are still lacking. The PAiCE support programme (Platforms, Additive Manufacturing, Imaging, Communication, Engineering) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is intended to remedy this situation. An associated lighthouse project is IC4F (Industrial Communications for Factories), in which the Hamburg intralogistics company STILL is playing a major role. “The 15 project partners from industry and research – including Robert Bosch GmbH, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom AG and Nokia – have spent the past three and a half years developing a technology kit for a trustworthy industrial communication and computing infrastructure,” explains Ansgar Bergmann, project manager at the Technology & Innovation department, who is responsible for STILL’s share of the project. This technology kit is based on an open architecture and allows modular extensions for new applications and communication technologies. Bergmann: “The results of our research will enable users to select suitable information and communication technologies according to industry 4.0 requirements and a specific migration approach”. These secure, robust and real-time communication solutions for the manufacturing industry will use key technologies from the areas of 5G, multi-access edge computing (MEC), cloud computing, virtualisation, industrial monitoring and analytics.

Ansgar Bergmann is particularly proud of the fact that STILL not only “simply took part” in this project, but was able to contribute their expertise to the fullest extent and decisively influence the development. “We have put our wealth of experience, which we have in the areas of industrial networking and Industry 4.0, to good use. In doing so, we benefited from the fact that we have already helped to develop several industry guidelines on behalf of the Federal Government and the VDMA in the past,” says the STILL expert. At the same time the Hamburg intralogistics company was also able to benefit from participating in the IC4F project. Bergmann: “First of all we proved to ourselves that we know how to successfully network processes in the warehouse and that our approaches work. In addition, we were able to gain many new insights, which we will now use in the cooperation with our customers to the benefit of both sides”.

Live demonstrations to underscore project success

On October 22, this work was provisionally completed. STILL invited project partners and internal stakeholders to the company headquarters on the Elbe. There, Nokia set up a mobile radio campus network, which was specially required for the project implementation and which will also serve as a pioneer for new communication technologies such as 5G. In several live demonstrations the equally important and groundbreaking results of the project work were then presented. One of the live demonstrations (“Use Case Truck-to-X Communication”), which was mainly developed by STILL, dealt for example with door control in a factory hall. In this use case both forklift trucks and other factory installations were integrated into a common communication environment. The indoor localisation system supplied the position data of the forklift trucks, which were then processed by various applications of the partners involved in the live demonstration. In this example, the door control was carried out purely from a virtual world. The door opened automatically as soon as a forklift truck approached it. This door control was implemented as a so-called administration shell. For this purpose, digital twins were generated from the forklift truck and the gate. In the submodels of the administration shell, all physical properties of the forklift and the gate, also called assets in this context, were then made permanently available. The virtual model, which also controlled the processes, was thus continuously able to compare these data and, for example, to open the door only when the dimensions of the forklift really fit through. In addition, the truck’s drive control is accessed and the driver is warned. Door damage as it occurs today would thus be a thing of the past.

Excellent customer benefit

During the event in Hamburg, several live demonstrations and a number of new or extended industrial use cases were shown, such as the “Bring your Own Network” approach developed by Siemens to facilitate the installation of Multi Tennant networks in companies, or a modern “Certificate Management via the Cloud” solution by Telekom, which increases both security and convenience in the field of industrial communication. “These proof-of-concept implementations serve to test the methodology and validate the use cases,” says Ansgar Bergmann. However, the STILL expert is firmly convinced that much of the knowledge and experience gained from the IC4F project will also be incorporated into industrial applications later on and will be of great benefit to STILL’s customers. Ansgar Bergmann is convinced that “with this experience as a basis we are the ideal partner when it comes to industrial 4.0 topics or warehouse networking.”

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