Since Crown Imperial was established as Crown Products in 1946, the company’s portfolio over the decades has included wooden toys, nursery furniture, contract furniture for the government and even ice cream advertising stands.

The family-run business now specialises in the manufacture of high quality Britishmanufactured furniture for kitchens, bedrooms and living areas.

It has a large showroom with 6,000 products in Daventry, in Northamptonshire but its headquarters are in Herne Bay in Kent. This is where it has recently overhauled and enhanced handling procedures by bringing in a number of Combilift models to replace the counterbalance and reach trucks that were previously used.

The wide variety of raw materials and the varying dimensions of finished products that need to be moved around and stored at the 10,000m2 production facility required versatile equipment, and store manager Bruce Whiting was also keen to reduce the level of ride-on forklift traffic, particularly in areas where a lot of other personnel are present.

Combilift solutions

Taking advice from Jon Collett of materials handling consultants Mexmast, he looked at the Combilift range and found the ideal solution in the form of Combi-WR4 multidirectional pedestrian stackers and a Combi- CBE4 multi-directional counterbalance design forklift.

Crown Imperial is the first company in the UK to take delivery of the new 4 tonne capacity electric powered Combi-CB.

“We wanted a truck with a small footprint that could work in narrow confines, but we also needed enough capacity to cope with our heavier loads,” said Mr Whiting.

“Electric power was also essential for lower running costs, so we were pleased to hear that Combilift had recently added the CBE4 to its range.”

The CBE4 is used across the site for a wide range of tasks; offloading 6m-long packs of timber, chipboard and MDF and taking them to racking, and handling long profiles and timber doors.

The CBE4 can also attach a tipping bin to the forks, which is used to take chipping waste to the wood burner for recycling (which provides fuel for heating the facility). The compact size of the truck coupled with its four-way ability enables it to easily manoeuvre the tipper between machinery in the main hall without affecting the production schedules.

Combi-WR4S

The two Combi-WR4s, which have a capacity of 1,450kg, tend to work inside, although they are equally at home outside if required. They handle lighter loads such as the long profiles, pallets of components such as drawer runners, as well as the large amount of cardboard that is used for packaging.

A major feature of all Combilift’s walk behind trucks is the unique patented multiposition tiller arm, which enables push button rotation of the rear wheel parallel to the chassis and back.

This offers excellent visibility of the surroundings, the forks and the load, and when working in narrow aisles it enables the operator to stand at the side of the unit rather than the rear, thus avoiding any crush risk.

The lower speed of pedestrian machines compared to ride-on trucks also fits neatly with Crown Imperial’s requirement for ultra-safe operation, particularly when manoeuvring around corners or potential blind spots.

Better use of storage space

The versatility and four-way capability of the Combilifts have enabled better use of storage space for long products.

“Thanks to the Combi-WR4’s manoeuvrability in the small aisles of the warehouse area we can put stock where we couldn’t previously and can now store all the elements of a customer order in one place,” added Mr Whiting.

“With the old reach trucks we had to split orders and keep them in different locations. So it is now much quicker to locate a specific order, and if customers want to delay shipment there is no issue for us with lack of space.

“We pride ourselves on our advanced manufacturing equipment with which we can process timber and MDF at speeds of 30 panels a minute, or drill one million holes a day, and our handling equipment is now equally sophisticated.”