FinnForest UK has signed a £4 million deal with Briggs Equipment to supply it with 78 machines, including 3 and 4.5 tonne Cat diesel counterbalance trucks, 27 Baumann sideloaders and 5 Combi Multi directional machines.
FinnForest UK supplies timber and timber based products to DIY retailers, builders’ merchants, and house building, construction and transport industries.
Briggs has helped the company reduce its materials handling fleet by around 38 per cent, through a combination of engineer coverage, stringent service level agreements, extended service hours and free service cover trucks if a machine can’t be fixed within 12 working hours.
Mike Lomas, Finnforest’s operations director, said: “We worked together to reduce the fleet size whilst significantly increasing productivity levels per machine.
“Service support was critical: our sites are geographically diverse, located across the UK, Briggs have 70 engineers within a 25 mile radius of each of our sites. This enables Briggs to deliver its guaranteed 96 per cent uptime levels and a service response of less than three hours guaranteed.”
The five and a half year contract includes full maintenance and service, resident engineers, and offers a single point of invoicing. Bespoke truck modifications to help reduce damage, tyre wear and reduce fuel expenditure, have also contributed to reduced lifetime costs.