Baxters, the famous soup maker, has choosen Continental’s SC 20 solid tyre on its fork lift truck fleet at its production and distribution facility in Fochabers. Fitting the SC 20 has reportedly improved safety, cut vehicle downtime and the whole life costs of tyres at the business. According to the company, the new tyres return three times the tyre life expectancy of the firm’s previous brand.

Baxters’ Fochabers production and distribution facility runs 25 Hyster trucks, a mixture of both gas and electric from 1.75 up to 3 tonnes. Trucks are maintained onsite on a three month service cycle by an engineer from Barloworld Handling Ltd.

John Pease, stores and warehouse manager is responsible for the forklifts at the Fochabers plant: “We had been using the standard Original Equipment solid tyres that came fitted to the trucks but they were performing very poorly. Vehicle downtime was excessive which made the operation very costly. Our plant is very demanding, running round the clock but the tyres just weren’t returning the performance that we expect. Tyres were wearing quickly and unevenly and were occasionally chunking leaving trucks unstable and creating a safety issue for both products and trucks.”