Kyabram’s Cold Storage has bought sparkling new electric forklifts, signalling the business’s commitment to the environment and the growing Kyabram community.
Established in 1984, KCS was started by three local families, including the Fairless family which recently bought the majority shares – taking on responsibility of the Kyabram company.
Luke Fairless, grandson of the original owner, has taken a supervisor role at the company and has overseen new expansions that commit to their promise of putting KCS on the map.
Last Easter, the business decided it was time to buy eight new electric forklifts to utilise efficiency and minimise its carbon footprint.
“The old equipment was coming to the end of its life and you want to get more efficiencies out of the equipment you’re using, we decided to buy new ones – and so far, they’ve been really good,” Luke Fairless said.
The new forklifts, made by American company Caterpiller, use lithium-iron batteries which reduce the time spent charging, which Mr Fairless said had made an improvement in efficiency and energy consumption.
“It’s part of our business structure to obviously cut down on our carbon footprint – it’s what everyone sort of needs to be doing,” Mr Fairless said.
“We’re taking a pretty hard stance on trying to do that – and these forklifts are our first steps into getting into that avenue of what were meant to be doing.”
Starting with 16 coolrooms bought from the original Kyabram Cannery, the business has now expanded to 60 coolrooms with temperatures ranging from -18° to 11°.
The company has a total capacity of 50,000 units and an average 42,000 units being filled out daily, the business is continually growing and expanding.
The company is committed to supporting the Kyabram community and Mr Fairless said it was dedicated to employing locals.
“It’s easy to get people from around here and that’s what we’re going to do,” Mr Fairless said.
“We want to employ locals and keep investing in this town.”
Situated across two sites — one at Merrigum and the other hidden in the backstreets of Kyabram – the company sits amongst the top three storage and logistical providers in regional Victoria.
The business has plans to roll out these new environmentally-friendly alternatives at the Merrigum site soon.