Efficiency and safety
October 10th 2007 Based in the industrial heartland of the United Kingdom, Narrow Aisle Ltd has been one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of very narrow aisle (VNA) equipment for over three decades.
The company’s range of VNA products includes man-down and man-up trucks, order pickers and reach trucks, but Narrow Aisle is perhaps best known as the manufacturer of the award-winning Flexi range of articulated forklifts.
The Flexi is now the biggest selling articulated forklift truck model in Europe and Flexis are becoming an increasingly common site in warehouses and distribution centres in the United States and Asia.
Trucks for the European market are designed and built at Narrow Aisle’s UK manufacturing facility and distributed world-wide through a fully supported distributor network, but to ensure that the growing demand from the rapidly expanding sales territories of the US and Asia continues to be met, a manufacturing agreement was recently signed with a partner company to build Narrow Aisle products in the Far East.
With its growing penetration in all the key regions, Flexi is now well established as a truly global brand, and the company’s strong presence at trade events and exhibitions worldwide, ensures that the striking Flexi logo – often referred to as ‘the red planet’ – is instantly recognisable.
Two trucks in one
Effectively two trucks in one, the Flexi’s design enables it to load like a counterbalanced machine – both inside and outside – but it can also work in very narrow aisles. This dual purpose functionality guarantees the user a wide range of benefits – not the least of which is the ability to load and unload lorries and deliver pallets directly into the racking in a single operation. By doing so, it increases efficiency and productivity while abolishing double handling and the costs associated with operating a bigger truck fleet than is necessary.
As well as providing greater operational flexibility, using a Flexi articulated truck ensures that warehouse operators get the most from their storage cube. It has been well documented that by operating a Flexi it is possible to increase pallet storage capacity by anything between 30 and 50 per cent. Such efficiency gains resulted in the Flexi winning the prestigious UK Fork Lift Truck Association ‘Archie’ award for Design Innovation in 2004.
A design-led business
Although the articulated forklift truck concept is now firmly established and has proved to be the optimum handling solution in many applications, Narrow Aisle continues to work on the evolution of the Flexi product. Recent design innovations include the Flexi GAS and the Flexi HiMAX. The Flexi GAS is the first LP Gas-powered articulated truck capable of working in aisles as narrow as 1762mm, while the HiMAX, which offers lift heights up to 12 metres, brings the benefits of unguided VNA storage to hi-bay warehouses.
Award winning design
However, perhaps the most significant recent development from the company was the recent launch of the latest version of the Flexi – the Generation 4. The truck boasts all of the design features that have established the FLEXI as Europe’s biggest selling articulated forklift, and also includes a number of significant operator safety-related advances.
The truck’s contribution to improved safety in and around the warehouse, was recognized when the Flexi G4 was named winner of the prestigious British Materials Handling Federation (BMHF) Safety Award for 2007. John Maguire, sales and marketing director of Narrow Aisle, commented: “Operator safety is a key consideration within any materials handling operation and with forklift trucks implicated in around one-quarter of all serious workplace transport-related injuries and some ten fatalities a year, it’s easy to understand why.
“Successful warehousing is always a balance of productivity and safety, but safety has to be the foremost consideration. Forklift truck design has an important role to play in safety and Narrow Aisle’s FLEXI G4 articulated truck demonstrates how a lift truck can be built to aid a driver’s safe practice.
John Maguire continued: “During the development of the G4, Narrow Aisle’s design team set out to produce a product that incorporates all the safety features required by the North American market and also meets all relevant safety legislation demanded by the European Community. The resulting awardwinning G4 is, we believe, by far the safest and most productive articulated on the market. It is also a truly global product and the standard G4 design engineered at our UK manufacturing plant can be used safely anywhere in the world. www.flexi.co.uk More articles from Narrow Aisle Flexi: | 
