Europe’s largest pumpkin grower David Bowman has hired forklift trucks from Jungheinrich’s rental fleet to bring in the harvest in time for Halloween, on Thursday.
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Happy Halloween!
Each year the company grows two million pumpkins, which it sells to UK supermarkets as well as other suppliers across Europe.
To help cope with this annual spike in activity, the company regularly hires a fleet of electric-powered counterbalanced forklifts from Jungheinrich’s short term rental fleet.
The electric powered forklifts, which are on site at Bowman for about two months, are used to transfer crates of harvested and washed pumpkins from the trailers that bring them in from the field to Bowman’s 120,000 sq ft temperature controlled store and pack house.
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Bowman’s pumpkins going through the washing machine
The crates are block stacked five high and the pumpkins are left to ripen at a constant 25 degrees in the facility, which was built in 1997 and recently extended to cope with increased demand.
Once ripe, the crate loads of pumpkins are delivered by the forklift trucks from the temperature controlled store to the packing area. Here they are placed in shop ready display trays and retail merchandise is added.
Orders are palletised and transferred to a goods-out marshalling space where they await collection.
