With a core range that includes paper cups, soup containers, fast food trays, plastic cutlery, drinking cups and straws, disposable wooden coffee stirrers and skewers, Go-Pak has established itself as one of the leading suppliers in the highly competitive global food service disposables market since its launch some seven years ago.

Such has been Go-Pak’s success that the company’s original 10 metre high UK warehouse facility, no longer offered sufficient storage space to allow products to be held in the quantities required to maintain optimum supply chain efficiency, so in May 2016 Go-Pak moved to a new 13 metre high, 76,000 sq ft facility in the Gloucester port town of Sharpness.

Leading multimodal operator Samskip is seeking to strengthen its competitive position within the European transportation market by introducing a new type of composite container flooring. Manufactured out of fibre reinforced plastic (FRP), the flooring promises to deliver a number of significant environmental and operational benefits.

Samskip has developed the new flooring system in partnership with Guangdong-based CIMC ECO New Material Development Co. Ltd. To date it has been used within a series of around 500 45ft dry cargo containers, delivered since November 2015. Another batch of a similar size is due to be manufactured with the FRP flooring in the second half of 2016.

Automated materials handling solution specialist TGW Logistics has acquired robotics company CHM Automatisierungstechnik GmbH, located in Stephanskirchen in Germany. The acquisition expands TGW's portfolio of products and services and CHM will become a 100 per cent subsidiary of the TGW Group: TGW Robotics.

TGW already has experience of working with its newly acquired business on several completed and ongoing projects. CHM constructs and builds specialist machinery, including gantry robots and picker arms as well as special conveyor equipment. The company's expertise in robotic controls and the development of buckling arm robots are of particular value to the parent company, with these technologies predominantly being used in the palletising of cartons in production areas.

Dutch start-up company Ahrma launches a revolutionary pallet at the K-Messe in Düsseldorf. Ahrma combines new innovative materials with The Internet of Things, using state-of-the-art intelligence, and well managed pool and rental services. Thus creating optimal supply chain control, lower supply chain costs and proven sustainability benefits. Currently a small group of triple-A launching customers are commercially testing this ‘pallet loaded with innovation’.

Erik de Bokx, managing director Ahrma: “The pallet industry hasn’t shown any major innovation in the last fifty years. Ahrma aims to be a frontrunner in this industry by adapting The Internet of Things in logistics. We offer more than just an innovation; we have transformed this traditional product to the arena of the new economy of sharing, preserving and sustainability”.

A Coventry-based manufacturer that provides specialist modification to vehicles in the automotive, aerospace, defence and rail sectors has received a £1million investment.

Penso City Vehicles will use the funding to invest in tools to modify the Mercedes Vito Tourer into a low emission taxi, including improving its turning circle and enabling side door wheelchair access. The deal will see the business create 20 new jobs and safeguard a further 50 in the next 12 months.

VETTER Industrie GmbH, a specialist for forks of all types, and Motec GmbH, developer and manufacturer of heavy-duty camera-monitor systems, are working together “to produce trendsetting solutions for logistics companies”. The SmartFork® for forklift trucks is the complex outcome of this cooperation, a development which the partners say has proven its worth in everyday industrial applications.

Equipped with "electronic sensory organs", the VETTER SmartFork® delivers additional information for the machine operator. In order to improve workplace safety, the sensors "feel" the physical surroundings, digitalise the result and send it to a display.

Inland container logistics company Pentalver has taken delivery of ten new Carrier Transicold Generator Sets at its Felixstowe depot. The Gensets are the 69RG15 series, incorporating the latest technology in autonomous power supply for Refrigerated Container Equipment. The additional units augment a UK wide fleet, in providing a robust network to support the movement of temperature controlled goods imported and exported from the UK.

An  increase in the weight of deliveries has led BM Catalysts Ltd to invest in a bespoke loading platform to help improve yard efficiency and safety. The company, Europe’s largest manufacturer of Catalytic Converters, DPFs and Front Pipes, is now regularly receiving deliveries of heavy items which cannot be easily manoeuvred. As such, a solution was required to allow the easy transfer of goods whilst also ensuring staff safety. After researching various options, BM Catalysts approached Thorworld Industries.

Packaging company Taylor Davis, which is based in Wiltshire (UK) and specialises in producing metal and plastic containers for food and other uses, has opened its first northern logistics centre at Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire. The new facility has already created 15 new jobs in an area that was hit by the closure, in May this year, of the Ferrybridge C coal-fired power station which employed over 170 people, with further recruitment planned later in the year. The facility is the company’s first northern distribution base and will supplement its warehouse and distribution centres at Westbury in Wiltshire and Warwick, enabling more efficient delivery of its plastic and metal containers to clients across the UK.

Narrow Aisle Ltd, manufacturer of the Flexi series of articulated forklift trucks, has reported strong interest in its range of products and services from visitors to its stand at the recent CeMAT exhibition in Hannover, Germany. “It was our best ever CeMAT,” says the company’s sales and marketing director, John Maguire. He continues: “CeMAT has always been a successful show for us and this year was no different. We met some very senior people from diverse industries – many of whom were at the show to discuss their plans for the implementation of major handling systems.”