Narrow Aisle is a leader in the innovation, design and manufacturer of very narrow aisle warehousing (VNA) truck solutions. Narrow Aisle pioneered the development, design and manufactures the award-winning Flexi AC range of articulated warehouse trucks.

DSC_2196Flexi AC trucks, designed and manufactured by the company are distributed in the UK and world-wide through a fully supported distributor network.

Our headquarters are in Great Bridge, eight miles west of Birmingham, UK. From this location, since 1976 we have been supplying innovative space saving and efficient truck based warehousing solutions. Our key global markets include USA, India, South Africa, Brazil, Gulf Region, South America, Western Europe and Australia.

WLN – As a leading supplier in the Narrow Aisle category, what has the last year been like for your business? How about for the rest of your sector?

The VNA segment has continued to recover post ‘crisis,’ but the increasing lack of built new warehouses with good quality ‘flat’ floors has proved a drag on sales of ManUp guided trucks.

However, the Flexi articulated truck market has grown significantly due to the number of customers needing to reconfigure existing buildings. Many are using our new Flexi StorMAX concept which can increase capacity by 50% compared to traditional reach trucks and do not need ‘flat’ floors or wire guidance like ManUp VNA truck units; a huge potential saving at minimal capital cost. We know customers who have completely reconfigured their operations to Flexi StorMAX. Once they include savings on LED lighting energy costs, their overall project payback is less than 12 months.

WLN – What are your best-known products and services?

Our range of Flexi AC trucks is now developed for use across all logistics, manufacturing and retail sectors, and covers all key customer requirements. The HiMAX AC model lifts to 14 metres with state of the art vision and stacking systems, and is pushing the traditional Manup VNA truck out of the large high bay warehouse market. Our Flexi VNA AC model has allowed many existing customers to replace lower lifting ‘Turret’ Man Down VNA trucks with a product that is 25% more efficient in identical aisleways with or without guidance.

The Flexi AC NANO has made significant in roads into the retail back of store pallet unloading and storage market. Retail customers are able to halve their under-utilized ‘back of store’ fleets of reach trucks and counterbalance, replacing them with one four wheel Flexi AC NANO that eliminates double pallet handling and increases storage capacity by up to 30%, handling both ISO (CHEP) or EURO (DB) pallets with ease. The Flexi has been a top seller for over 25 years. Over 5000 of these ‘workhorse’ warehouse trucks are at work up and down the country. Many have been ‘upcycled’ by refurbishing to provide long term usage at very low operating costs, hence the second hand values of the Flexi are by far the highest in the industry.

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Many Third Party Logistics companies have invested in newer taller ‘high bay’ warehouse facilities. These typically need higher lift Flexi trucks with more capacity. The Flexi HiLOAD AC was developed to provide a platform to lift the standard UK grocery retail pallet weight 12 tonnes to over 10 metres. Interestingly, the lift height of HiLOADs is often one extra pallet higher than traditional reach trucks in the same building as there is no loss of stacking/storage height due to high ‘reach legs’ on a Flexi. Of course the original Flexi benefits are still available: 25% increased throughput speeds, no lost time ‘reaching’ and no ‘double’ handling when direct vehicle loading.

WLN – What makes you the first choice supplier in your field?

We pressed on with development of our global distribution network, 63 countries to date. We have renewed our ISO 9001 accreditation for the 20th year together with a major component supplier quality upgrade, significantly extending Flexi durability and the introduction of five year parts warranty terms, a major reduction in preventative servicing requirements which will reduce servicing costs and increase uptime for all our customers.

We developed and introduced our first new ‘Order Picking’ truck for a decade; the FlexiPiCK. All our previous products were ‘Manup’ cab type orderpickers. Customers have come to realise that ‘manual’ case picking is in most cases not cost effective. In fact the increasing reduction in ‘items per line visit’ brought about by the advent of ‘e’ fulfilment, means it is no longer cost effective to use manual manup cab orderpickers due to rising labour costs and poor productivity.

Our FlexiPiCK, for the first time, introduces mechanised picking of full pallet layers to the UK Logistics industry. The concept is well tried and tested in North America and growing rapidly and is set to replace a significant proportion of manual picking of orders in the wholesale and retail sectors here in Europe.

WLN – What changes have you made to your core offering in the last year?

As we have nearly 30 years of experience in providing customer driven space saving and efficiency improving solutions for the logistics industry, we are able to rightly claim to be market leader in the field.

The pressure on warehouse operators to reduce costs is immense. We developed and launched ou rnew high density storage concept in early 2015. The Flexi StorMAX AC system allows a nett 50% increase in pallets stored compared to traditional reach trucks. The system combines a number of existing technologies to provide a unique low cost per pallet stored solution that uses warehouse management systems (WMS) to control pallet storage in two-deep racking on a FILO basis. The system is able to store more pallets in the cube at significantly less cost than automated shuttle car systems with 30% less supporting forklifts than these slow moving systems need.

WLN – What new products and services have you introduced?

Our Flexi StorMAX AC was introduced to customers this year. This unique Flexi based truck will operate in a very narrow aisle and place ISO (CHEP) pallets two deep in high bay pallet racking has proven to be a popular solution providing an increase of 50% compared to traditional reach trucks.

The ability to work in existing reconfigured warehouses has allowed operators to increase pallet capacity at much lower cost per pallet stored than single deep installed in the past. The added bonus especially in the ‘e’ fulfilment sector is that aisles operated by Flexi StorMAX can also be used for simultaneous ground level customer order assembly which is prohibited with the old ManUp lateral stacking units. Ground level order picking is the only cost effective manual picking method these days.

WLN – What industries are your customers in?

Our range of Flexi products have been developed to solve intralogistics handling and storage challenges across virtually all industry sectors that need to store and distribute goods on pallets. Our new product FlexiPiCK has moved us into customer order assembly in grocery retail. Our development of palletless handling for single products like white goods and appliances has also opened up new customer order fulfilment roles for our Flexi product. The cost pressure on third party logistics operators means maximising storage is critical. Our StorMAX system provides the maximum pallet capacity in any building envelope at the lowest possible cost per pallet stored.

WLN – How do your products and services help customers become more efficient, greener or work safer?

Our space saving and efficiency enhancing Flexi products have for 25 years been helping our customers in the UK and in over 63 countries around the world to save money in the intralogistics costs which by definition allows them to move more goods, and use less energy per tonne of goods handled. Our products are always designed to exceed safety standards so we can sell them anywhere in the world.

WLN – Can you tell us about some of your customers and the work you do for them?

We work with many of the leading logistics companies in the UK and globally, CEVA, DHL, XPO, Kuehne & Nagel, Bibby, Potter Group, Europe Worldwide to name a few. Our market leading high density storage systems provide cost effective intralogistics solutions that can be implemented on short lead times with minimum infrastructure investment and associated cost.

WLN – Is there a recent or current project that stands out as a showcase for your company? Can you tell us about it?

Our largest recent single site project has a capacity of 70,000 plus pallets in 765,000 sq ft with 25 x Flexi HiMAX lifting to 13 metres using modern LCD high definition vision and programmable laser guided lift height selector systems. Our smallest project could be a one aisle Flexi AC 1000 working at the ‘back of store’ in Scotland, providing all external unloading and internal narrow storing facilities even when it snows.

WLN – What were your company’s biggest achievements in the last 12 months?

We developed the Flexi StorMAX high density storage system which has taken us into a completely new market, food, grocery and FMCG. The success of this product has resulted in us opening up new collaborations with storage rack manufacturers and Warehouse Management System (WMS) suppliers. The Flexi StorMAX systems uses all three of these proven technologies to provide a ground breaking intralogistics solution. Developments in this new market sector have demonstrated we can continue to grow rapidly by innovating and providing cost effective highly efficient truck based intralogistics solutions.

WLN – Are you currently investing in the business, taking on staff or going into new markets or countries? If so, how’s it going?

Having extended our plant by 40% in 2014 our sales have allowed us to grow into that space. To help increase production volumes and quality we have made a number of strategic alliances with quality Tier 1 suppliers. We implemented a solus supply agreement during the year with Continental AG for our superelastic tyre supplies, a major step up in safety and quality. Europe’s foremost MHE electric motor manufacturer Schabmüller, has also agreed a solus supply agreement to provide all our requirement from one reliable and high quality source.

Due to a significant increase in volume sales in the UK, we have appointed an additional Business Development Manager to increase the service to the logistics industry in the fast growing Midlands regions.

Our development overseas included the appointment of authorised distributors in China, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea to capitalise on the growth in warehousing and logistics in this dynamic region of the world.

Our product development programme continues, as ever ‘higher, heavier and narrower’ will continue: Watch this space as we break the height barrier!

Building on our successful launch into South East Asia in 2015 we will further develop our global network. New distribution agreements in Malaysia and Korea are a highlight for 2016. With our own representation locally, we then expect to extend our reach further into the fast growing Asia Pacific region in due course.

WLN – What are you doing to bring on new talent and raise skills levels in your company?

Over a number of years we have invested in apprentices in both our commercial and engineering functions. This development has started to deliver significant opportunities for both our trainees and our company as a whole. We have a policy of promoting from within which is supported by our policy of employing apprentices and graduate trainees who have talent and potential to grow within our organisation.

WLN – What are the major issues facing the Narrow Aisle category as we go forward? How is your company addressing them?

UK Logistics will continue to grow due to the major changes taking place in the retail sector. The move by consumers to ‘online’ ordering, delivery, click and collect and away from large ‘superstore’ format will accelerate and create many new opportunities for the 3PL sector.

The shortage of newer good quality warehouse sheds will lead to more refurbishing and reconfiguring of older warehouse stock. These investments will result in a continued growth in MHE volumes especially products that save space in existing buildings – like our Flexi range!

WLN – Will you be exhibiting at any major trade shows in the coming year?

Our largest commitment in 2016 is the IMHX at NEC in September. As its an international show we expect to host many of our overseas distrbutors and customers and our investment in our stand and new products will reflect the importance of our ‘home market’ show case. We will also attend a number of ‘regional’ intralogistics events in Europe and around the world notably Logimat, Stuttgart and CeMAT Germany, with our local distribution partners. In a way these are better for our business as we get to talk directly to potential customers who would benefit from our cost saving technology.

CONTACT NARROW AISLE LTD

0121 557 6242

info@flexi.co.uk

www.flexi.co.uk

@Flexiforklifts

Flexi Narrow Aisle

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