An all-terrain forklift that handles any load, anywhere

The Combi Rough Terrain forklift has greatly improved efficiencies, animal welfare and safety in the broiler industry and is now proving its worth on fruit farms. Glenneis Kriel reports.

- Glenneis Kriel

A little more than a decade ago, most broiler producers were dependent on modified mainstream machines to collect mature broilers out of poultry houses. Not being specifically designed for the job, these machines were not very efficient. “They always left me with this feeling that there had to be a better way of doing things,” says Bruce Kleynhans, who has been involved in the poultry industry for over 30 years and is the managing director of Cedarvest.

Kleynhans’s search for a solution ended when he met Sam Moffett at the International Production and Processing Expo in Atlanta, US. Moffett turned out to be the son of Robert Moffett, who developed the first truck-mounted forklift, and later co-founded Combilift with Martin McVicar.

Combilift exhibited the Combi Rough Terrain (RT) forklift at the Expo, which Moffett informed Kleynhans was designed in 2011 to meet the demands of poultry producers in the UK. Kleynhans immediately recognised the potential of the forklift, resulting in Cedarvest becoming the sole distributor of the Combi-RT in Southern Africa and importing their first Combi-RTs in 2013.

THE BROILER EXPERIENCE

Kleynhans says today almost every broiler producer who uses a modular system to collect birds – which is almost all the commercial producers in the country – has a Combi-RT in their catching operations.

He points out that Astral was one of the first clients and now has around 17 Combi-RTs. Before the Combi-RT, producers either used a Moffett forklift, designed to be a light truck-mounted forklift for deliveries, or a Bell forklift, designed for use in the forestry industry to haul the live birds.