New Toyota material handling equipment for Zip Water

Iconic Australian brand, Zip Water, has acquired a substantial fleet of new Toyota material handling equipment to support its expanded production line. 

From humble beginnings, the company now exports its drinking water systems to more than 70 countries, yet still manufactures locally, out of its factory in Condell Park in Sydney’s west.

Glenn Bucknell, Zip Water head of supply chain, said that after being acquired by global water treatment company Culligan in 2017, the business has branched into new markets including the US and China.

Bucknell says,  “Culligan brought us an avenue into the US so we had huge potential for growth and they encouraged us to upscale our manufacturing footprint. This led us to make a significant investment in our new production line to enhance our output.”

With an aging fleet from another supplier and a mix of owned and leased equipment, Bucknell saw the plant expansion as an opportunity to update and streamline the material handling equipment. 

He says, “Our previous primary material handling fleet was getting old and repair and maintenance costs were increasing. It was becoming inefficient to keep investing money into the equipment we owned.

“We adopted a model with Toyota Material Handling Australia (TMHA) to enable us to lease all our equipment. That gives us the latest technology and servicing at a fixed price with no surprises. It also gives us the flexibility to change the mix of our fleet and scale up according to business needs.

“It no longer made sense for us to invest in the outright purchasing of equipment because, with a business changing as rapidly as ours, we don’t know what we’re going to need in five years’ time. So, having the flexibility that Toyota provides was attractive. It’s reassuring to know that we have a partner that can meet our needs as our business grows.”

The updated fleet of material handling equipment now includes four Toyota 730-DR32TT Double Deep Reach Trucks, two 8FBE18 and one 8FBN25 Toyota Battery Electric Counterbalance forklifts, Toyota Sprint elevated work platforms, Toyota Walkie Stackers and a Toyota 32-8FG30 LPG Counterbalance forklift with Cascade hydraulic fork-widening attachment.

Michael Provan, TMHA NSW major account manager, says that as part of the tender process, he applied one of the cornerstones of the Toyota Advantage: Tailored Business Solutions. “We at TMHA always try to understand how our customers’ businesses operate, what their needs are and make our recommendations to help increase their operational efficiencies, safety and comfort, based on that. In Zip Water’s case it was about modernising their fleet and adopting a leasing with fixed-servicing costs model to provide greater transparency and peace-of-mind that they weren’t going to get any performance issues that could result in significant downtime – an especially important consideration for manufacturing facilities.”