Australia’s cotton growing industry has undergone tremendous expansion over the last two decades, with a growth spurt that has put pressure on service businesses struggling to keep up.

In the last ten years the acreage under cotton has expanded to almost 450,000 hectares from Emerald in Queensland to Hay in New South Wales.

Cotton growers and the CSIRO have collaborated to lift average yields from three to almost five bales per acre over the same period. Exports account for nearly 90 per cent of total production and quality is now regarded as the world’s best.

At Wee Waa, NSW, in the heart of cotton country, a vital business fuelling the industry’s growth has just replaced its fleet of Linde forklifts with new models to help it keep up with demand.

Cotton Seed Distributors is a CSIRO and grower funded business which has become Australia’s largest supplier of planting cotton seed. Its new Linde fleet consists of five H25D machines and a smaller H18D. All are covered by a long-term rental maintenance contract.

“I’ve been with Cotton Seed Distributors for seven years and there has been continuous industry growth throughout that period,” said Gary Mahar, the company’s inventory and dispatch manager.

“About six years ago we switched to Linde when we realised that conventional forklifts just couldn’t cope with the workload. It was obvious that we needed machines which not only had great productivity, but also had completely dependable service support when required.”

The Cotton Seed Distributors premises on the outskirts of Wee Waa are a hive of forklift activity throughout the year, with the supply of seed for planting merely the final step in a process that’s central to the industry’s success.

“We purchase anything up to 15,000 tonnes of cotton seed each year from contracted growers,” Gary Mahar explained. “We store it, delint it throughout the year and then package the black seed for storage again in 80 kilogram bags, 12 to a pallet.”

It is only when farmers place orders that the pallets are moved again, this time to a processing line where the bags are slit and their contents treated with fungicide and insecticide.

“The treated seed goes into 20 kilogram bags which we move about on pallets made up as 1200 kilogram loads,” Gary Maher said. “With the distributors responsible for making their own arrangements for collection, you can imaging how busy we get in the growing season.”

With storage and processing facilities up to 500 metres apart, the company’s Linde forklifts cover much more distance than most. “It’s a combination of everything,” Gary Mahar said. “In a 12 hour shift we need to get through a huge amount of work. With a conventional forklift you’d be continually waiting for the hydraulics to catch up.

In fact there was some hesitation from the company’s forklift operators when the company first switched to dual-pedal Linde machines with their hydrostatic transmission six years ago.

“It took about a week for the operators to become accustomed to the controls,” Gary Mahar said. “Now they wouldn’t consider anything else. In fact a couple of operators told us they wouldn’t drive another brand now.

“When you have people at the controls working hard for long hours you have to respect their opinions about the equipment they use.”

Mr Mahar said that Cotton Seed Distributors had considered another make which offered a hydrostatic system, but was swayed in its decision to remain with Linde by the service and support which it received.

“When you are at the mercy of the weather and the season you have to be completely confident in the equipment you have and the people who service it,” he said. “We’ve had excellent service support from Linde and the quality of the forklifts is such that two of our older forklifts have been retained because we know that we’ll get several more years out of them.”