Plant & Works Engineering February/March 2023

CASE STUDY J KH Drainage was established 53 years ago in Essex before moving to premises in Mildenhall in Suffolk a few years later. The founder’s grandson and JKH MD Daniel Prince has recently overseen a further move down the road to a 6-acre site which will give the company the capacity to grow and take on larger projects. A key piece of equipment to cope with the increased volume of raw materials and finished products is a 35t capacity Straddle Carrier from the Irish manufacturer Combilift. JKH Managing Director, Daniel Prince commented: “Growth this year was at around 30% and we expect this to continue due to ongoing large infrastructure projects such as rail links, road improvement schemes and a boom in housing construction.” He added: “These all generate increased demand for our products which we like to call ‘offsite solutions for onsite problems’. Together with our partner Althon, we supply standard and bespoke precast concrete products such as underground drainage chambers, headwalls and outfalls for pipes as well as gratings and steelworks to customers across the UK.” When the move to the new site was in the planning stages, Daniel and his team looked at options for handling the heavier and bulkier products when they are demoulded inside the casting facility and taken to external storage areas. These currently weigh in at around 8.5t, but will soon increase to 12t in a single cast, so extra lift capacity needed to be factored into any new equipment. Gantry cranes were initially considered but quickly discounted as they would have taken up too much of the already limited vertical space. “We can move smaller, standard castings with our regular forklifts”, said Prince, “but once you get above around 6t, or for bespoke oversized products that can have a footprint of 2.5 x 4m, this gets problematic as load stability becomes an issue. We therefore investigated the potential of a Combi-SC straddle carrier as recommended by Jimmy Pascavage of Fork Truck Direct.” Each Combi- SC is a bespoke unit to accord with the varied requirements of a customer’s specific application, and it took a fair bit of liaison between Daniel, Jimmy, Combilift’s SC specialist Stephen Wells and engineers at 38 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk February/March 2023 Handling & Safety Matters Focus on: Handling & Storage With JKH Drainage moving to a new 6-acre site to give the company the capacity to grow and take on larger projects, PWE looks at a key piece of equipment to cope with the increased volume of raw materials and finished products - a 35t capacity Straddle Carrier from the Irish manufacturer Combilift. Bespoke straddle carrier for bespoke drainage