Ideal cold store application

At the Norish Foods cold store at Brierley Hill in the Midlands, a fleet of Flexi Narrow Aisle articulated fork lift trucks has been operating on three shifts in a cold store at temperatures as low as -28 deg C for nearly seven years - running on the original powerful and durable trak air batteries and chargers supplied by Hoppecke Industrial Batteries.

The timing is important because normal operating life of a lead acid battery in cold store conditions is four or five years and batteries on average lose around 30 per cent of their capacity in cold storage applications. Therefore, vital factors for electric-powered trucks operating in a cold store environment are the quality of their batteries and the ability to charge them, which is why Norish Foods went for the trak air units as well as a high frequency charger system from Hoppecke.

The Hoppecke trak air system protects batteries from overcharge, which allows them to have a longer service life than other batteries in the field. Also, the high frequency chargers cut charging times by around 2.5 hours.