Hyster Hydrostatic lift trucks and Terburg tugmasters are enabling forest product port terminal operator Stanton Grove to capitalise on space through the tightening of aisles. Barloworld Handling has supplied trucks which offer greater residual capacities with smaller operating aisles, hydrostatic drives and specified to handle all types of paper – the trucks vary in capacity from 3,200kg up to 7,000kg and have a variety of attachments including bale clamps and tower clamps.
Rob Stewart, Stanton Grove managing director, says: “When we were coming to the end of our previous contract we looked at the product and packages that were available to us. After having the Hyster trucks demonstrated to us both at our site and at Barloworld we were impressed by their robustness and reliability. This along with Barloworld Handling’s track record in port applications and the commercial package helped us make our decision.”
Stanton Grove is solely dedicated to forest products with experience in the stevedoring, warehousing and distribution of damage sensitive commodities. It has operations at Newcastle, Sheerness, Tilbury and Immingham as well as an operation at the Royal Seaforth Dock at the Port of Liverpool. The company handles 600,000 tonnes of forest products a year, with more than half made up of newsprint and the rest a mix of wood pulp, craft products and timber and board.
The largest operation is at the Royal Seaforth Dock where there is 30,200sq m of covered warehousing and 13 acres of concrete hard standing for storing timber and board. These are adjacent to three deep-sea berths, the Freeport, the Euro-Rail Terminal and container terminal, enabling Stanton Grove to provide complete control over every element of the operation from a ship’s hold through to delivery to the end-user.
It is here that the majority of the lift truck fleet operates. On average five ships a month call at Liverpool from Canada, Russia and the near continent. Trucks can be loaded into all vessel types and, once on-board, they are used to unload paper rolls and bales of wood pulp. From the quayside or from trailer the paper rolls are then stored in the warehouse by the H5.00XM 5,000kg capacity lift trucks using tower clamps that enable them to carry two main size newsprint rolls at a time and stack them up to five high.
By using smaller capacity trucks with tower clamps – as opposed to double clamps – they are able to maximise space by tightening the aisles and stowing to mark and size in tight ‘block stows’ The bales of wood pulp are unloaded by the H7.00XL 7,000kg capacity lift trucks using bale clamps and then stacked up to five high. The rest of the lift truck fleet is spread over the other Stanton Grove sites.
The majority of the lift truck fleet is equipped with hydrostatic transmission, ensuring lower maintenance levels, reduction in damage, reduced tyre wear, and gives improved gradeability, acceleration and travel speed performance. The issue of damage reduction was particularly important as Stanton Grove had had problems in this area in the past.
