Combilift gears up for record year

The County Monaghan, Ireland-based company set up in 1998 and produced 130 machines in its first year. This year, said managing director Martin McVicar, it expects to ship 1,750 units, a 17% increase on 2006.

Mr McVicar attributes the company’s success to the initial Combilift concept, with its four-way capability suiting it particularly to use in the timber sector with its demand for handling long material lengths in restrictive storage areas. In the UK 60% of sales are to timber and related companies. Worldwide the proportion is 55%.

Mr McVicar also puts growth down to its research and development programme, to which it devotes 9% of revenue, and its willingness to tailor vehicles to the needs of particular sectors and customers.

The company has recently been developing new markets too, with the Middle East and eastern Europe among the latest regions to start buying Combilifts.

Meanwhile its ability to meet demand has been boosted by the move to a new factory, which opened last summer, and has single-shift capacity of 2,000 trucks per year.

In the next three years, Combilift predicts further expansion. It forecasts that its 160-strong workforce will rise by 100 and that the geographic spread of export markets will widen. It already sells as far afield as Greenland and Tahiti and aims to have a Combilift in “every country in the world” by 2010