Victorian food importer Lloyd Foods is set to purchase two new Toyota forklifts to augment the two it already runs following the company’s rapid growth in the last 18 months.
Based in the Melbourne suburb of Dandenong South, business has quadrupled since its 2015 inception, driving director Darren Lloyd to expand his warehouse and his fleet of forklifts.
“The business has quadrupled in the 18 months we’ve been operating,” Lloyd says. “When we opened in 2015 we had another brand of forklift, but after eight months we switched to Toyota forklifts as they ticked all the boxes.
“The forklifts are flexible and reliable, the service back-up is excellent and our account manager is very responsive to our needs,” Lloyd adds.
After buying an already existing food import business in Sydney in 2015, Lloyd relocated the business to Melbourne and renamed it Lloyd Foods.
“We currently import 10 containers of food per week, sourcing product from a dozen different countries,” Lloyd says. “It is all shelf-stable product so it is stored dry.”
Lloyd Foods currently owns a 2,237cc Toyota 8FG25, which has the Toyota System of Active Stability (SAS) safety technology that helps prevent tip-overs. The forklift is primarily used for the unloading and loading of trucks and containers using a slip-sheet attachment.
Toyota says the 8FG25 is the top selling counter-balance forklift in Australia.
The company’s Toyota BT Reflex RRE 200 reach truck has Toyota’s Transitional Lift Control (TLC) system for maintained load handling speeds. It has a reach of 13m and is at home in the narrow aisles of the warehouse.