ETSA Utilities provides electricity and the associated infrastructure in South Australia. They are responsible for delivery of electricity to residential and business customers throughout South Australia and for the maintenance of all the associated equipment and hardware needed to deliver the power. They store, pick and distribute up to 15,000 orders per month with 65 million? outward movements per year from 6,000 separate stock items. These include power poles, wires, maintenance equipment, lighting poles and more. They are also responsible for all the incoming management of old product. Once this is recieved it is either reconditioned, recycled or destroyed.

Naturally an operation of this size requires a substantial warehouse facility with the ability to move manly large and heavy pieces of equipment. When looking to upgrade their lift truck fleet, ETSA made a decision to put the comfort and OH&S of their operators and staff as the primary condition of purchase. Many of their staff are long term employees and had endured a long period of working vehicles that offered little in user comfort. This also affected productivity and safety as concentration levels can often drop when the users become uncomfortable and distracted.

As ETSA's Angle Park Warehouse & Distribution Manager Bob Leech says, "We needed to replace our 15 year old bone crunchers with a fleet that would look after our operators from a comfort and safety perspective. During the demonstration process, we found the Linde range to be the most ergonomic, quite and important to our operators, the most comfortable. Rather than a decision based on price alone, we decided that the well being of our staff was more important. Thankfully Linde offered the right products at the right price, that's why we chose Linde."

International products with a local flavour

The ETSA fleet now comprises a combination of Linde products to suit its various applications. From Electric Trucks for indoor use to a range of IC products for general and very specific yard duties.

The Electric Counterbalance trucks E18P's, are used inside the warehouse to retrieve and put away product from our high rise storage units. We also have a diverse range of internal combustion equipment to suit our requirements from 1.8 tonne up to 8 tonne. We have a number of 393 Series H35T trucks fitted with wide opening fork clamps to suit our longer loads like light and power poles. We also have trucks fitted with rotating attachments to assist our salvage work and our biggest forklift, an 8 tonne H80T, is fitted with a customised triple stage mast and a 360 degree rotating wide opening fork clamp. The Linde Hydrostatic Transmission is perfect for such specific heavy duty attachments.

We are very proud that all of our units fitted with our various attachments are custom made locally. The ability to work alongside local suppliers was another factor in Linde securing the ETSA contract.

So with comfort, drivability and a touch of local flavour, Linde proved to be the perfect package to provide ETSA employees with a much smoother ride and more comfortable working day.