Finnforest UK has signed up to a £4m materials handling deal to outsource the management of 78 machines at its six sites.
The contract was awarded to Briggs Equipment UK, based in Cannock, which also manages materials handling across the Travis Perkins group.
The five-and-a-half-year contract includes maintenance and service with resident engineers. Briggs guarantees 96% uptime levels and a service response of less than three hours.
As part of the contract Briggs reduced the size of the fleet by 38% while supplying new sideloaders and some Cat lift trucks. Finnforest now operates 3 tonne and 4.5-tonne Cat diesel counterbalance trucks, 27 Baumann sideloaders and five Combi Multi directional machines.
Briggs also provided truck modifications to help reduce damage, tyre wear and reduce fuel expenditure to cut lifetime costs.
“This was an extremely competitive tender and Briggs were able to offer a total solution,” said Finnforest operations director Mike Lomas. “We worked together to reduce the fleet size while significantly increasing productivity levels per machine.
“Service support was critical as our sites are geographically diverse, located across the UK. Briggs has 70 engineers within a 25-mile radius of each of our sites.”
