Establishing new markets outside of container handling for existing products is always a difficult task to undertake. However, one market that the Linde Heavy Truck Division has been successful in breaking into is equipment used in the production of wind energy products; this is a very important step for the Linde Heavy Truck Business Unit. SIAG (Schaaf Industries AG) is one of the leading suppliers of equipment for the wind energy sector, and has 1100 employees worldwide.
It has locations in Germany, Czech Republic, France and Egypt. Traditionally, a crane would be utilised for the lifting and movement of tower units for wind turbines. However, based on an idea from Mr Froberg (Technical director from Siag), and after establishing contact through Mr Timm Megerlin, Heavy Truck Central European Manager, and the Linde dealer Guensel, during the Hanover exhibition in 2008, the idea was further detailed and put into practice. Headed by Linde’s Heavy Truck development department and in close cooperation with the company Elme (producer of attachments), the Reachstacker lifting attachment was developed to create a ‘tool’ attachment capable of locking into other types of interchangeable lift attachments. The ‘tool’ attachment retains the standard features of rotation, side shift and twist lock characterised on the Reachstacker whilst the reduction in size and weight facilitates the retention of the Reachstacker capacity when employing the special attachment on-board. A top priority of the customer was and still is flexibility, from the managing of the individual parts to maintaining the lowest costs. The use of the Reachstacker, in place of the until now used gantry crane, displayed itself as the optimal solution. The result of this partnership in solution management was the placing of a multi-truck order.
