Lithium-ion technology wins Emons over

How do you make your intralogistics more economical, cleaner and more sustainable? For Emons Spedition GmbH, the answer was clear: by switching from LPG forklifts to lithium-ion units in the general cargo warehouse in Großbeeren.

It’s 6 o’clock in the morning somewhere between Berlin and Potsdam, and Emons is already a hive of activity. Lorries are constantly turning onto the haulage company’s premises, delivering freight from all over Germany. The goods are then prepared for onward transport to the German capital and the surrounding region of Brandenburg. The site is open 24 hours a day, five and a half days a week.

For this tightly scheduled haulage business to run smoothly, it goes without saying that a high-performance fleet of forklifts is absolutely essential. “The employees use them to unload the trailers, organise the goods in the hall and later load them onto the delivery trucks. In short, the industrial trucks are in use practically around the clock.

Team-focused

To tackle this challenging task, the family business chose conventional Linde forklift trucks in the payload range of 1.6 to 2.0 tonnes with conventional LPG drives. When some of these trucks were due to be replaced, a lithium-ion forklift from a manufacturer in the Far East was also tested. Forklift truck operator, Peter Weiss, explains that they realised it wasn’t going to work within a few days, “The vehicles were extremely imprecise in load handling. We have to work with centimetre precision to move goods from A to B in the tight spaces here, so that we don’t damage them.”

Employee feedback plays an important role in the decision-making process at Emons and it was ultimately due to this commitment to the team’s needs that Emons turned to the lithium-ion units from Linde Material Handling.

One thing was clear from the outset – the dual pedal control and Linde Load Control had been well-received in the past, so Emons wanted to use both technologies on the electric forklift trucks, too. So it was no surprise then that the test truck provided by the Linde contract partner (a Linde E18 Li-ION) met with approval right from the start.

Successful model(s)

For almost three years now, the Linde E16 to E20 with lithium-ion batteries have been whirring reliably and, thanks to the three-wheeled version, particularly agilely through the logistics hub at the Emons site in Brandenburg.

Following the successful pilot launch in Großbeeren, further Emons locations have now also converted to Li-ION technology. The trucks each draw their drive power from a single 16.3 kWh lithium-ion battery: a mid-range unit that permits a basic operating time of eight hours and is optimally suited to the company’s requirements. The vehicles simply receive interim charging during breaks, so that the operators have enough operating and lifting power at their disposal at all times.

In terms of performance, the lithium-ion units are also in no way inferior to their combustion engine counterparts. Although 2,500 operating hours per year per truck place high demands on the forklifts, they tackle their workload without complaint.

The changeover has proven to be a real success story for everyone involved, both in terms of operating efficiency and because at the end of the day – or rather, at the end of the busy working week at Emons – the cost of electricity is significantly less than for LPG. Everything still runs like clockwork here with the Linde trucks. Only now, thanks to lithium-ion technology, the logistics workflow is quieter, cleaner and more economical. Sometimes it’s worth taking a chance on a ‘system change’, especially when you’re sure that everything will run even better afterwards!