If you want a forklift which just picks things up and puts them down with very little complexity involved, Baoli’s the one. The cost structure and the reliability are great.

Price is obviously a major consideration, but when you can get a Baoli unit which will do the same job as something which might cost $10,000 more from one of our competitors, there are a lot of businesses who simply can’t or won’t pay extra. They are our Baoli customers.

Warranty support is first class, because ultimately it is Linde providing the support. In areas such as driver comfort we don’t get any complaints. There is a full floating cab and a full suspension seat to deal with any shocks or vibration.

Our technicians have no issues with servicing because the Baoli is a conventional machine with easy accessibility to all major components including filters. As for replacement parts, well we’ve got them on the shelf ninety per cent of the time and Linde will air freight anything else we need overnight.

The engines used in the 1.8 and 2.5 tonne Baoli ranges are the most popular in the entire Asia Pacific area, so buyers and hirers know what they are getting.

I can tell you we have a lot of those customers return to purchase Baoli forklifts from us. As an example there is a farmer in the region who originally hired five Baoli forklifts from us each year. Since then he has purchased two and has told us he will soon purchase two more.

That is reflected in our current share of the market here. Almost one in four buyers is a Baoli buyer these days in a market where there are six alternatives for buyers.

We have customers in the transport industry who have had Baoli forklifts for five years and they are still performing well with five or six thousand hours on them. Word of mouth recommendations for Baoli forklifts are also figuring more strongly now that the brand has established a fine track record. That makes me very confident about Baoli’s future.